Shane Garvin

I Love Blogging

Internet Marketing has been one of my favorite classes here at James Madison and it has really shown me how much I love to blog. The reason for this is the sheer fact that I get to be 100% myself. Yes sometimes you have to write about things you wouldn’t normally want to write about, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t be yourself when you write it. Lets take a look and see from a Google Analytics standpoint how my blog did over the course of this semester.

Analyze This!!!
     Over the course of the semester 184 people have visited my site and 139 of those people were unique visitors. I have received 395 page views with each person staying an average of 2 minutes and thirty-three seconds on my site. 75% of the visitors on my site are new and the remaining 25% are returning viewers. The bounce rate, which I am not too proud to say is at a whopping 56.52% could be worked on, but that has to do with the content and making sure people click on exactly what they want when they click on my site. Those are just some general things that could be said about my performance across the semester, but hopefully as time builds on I will get that bounce rate down and the page viewership up.

What I Learned
     I’ve always regarded internet marketing as something that I probably wouldn’t be able to figure out because of my poor performance in database marketing. However, the two couldn’t be further apart from one another and I have come to love almost everything about internet marketing. Dr. Clarke’s teachings have really put things into perspective for me and have made me really want to keep this blog and keep my IP address with GoDaddy. I think that I could potentially turn this is into a comedy blog or just some what of a journal to vent on. It seems as though people who have commented on earlier posts/pages seem to really like my material/writing style so why not keep it?

Last, but not least, a huge thank you to Dr. Clarke for getting me into blogging again, I can’t thank her enough!

So when it came time to do the “love JMU” SEO opimization project I was a little skeptical. I searched through the first twenty pages of Google after typing in the phrase and my page never showed up. However, now its been about 3-4 months and I have not only one, but two pages within the first three pages after searching “love JMU”; my homepage is #4 on the first page and my shanegarvin.com/lovejmu page is #6 on the 3rd page. Here are some ways I was able to get there.

In all honesty, I wanted to integrate “love JMU” through out my entire blog. I did this by dedicating most of the “write about anything…” related topics towards JMU and topics that either bugged me or that intrigued me about our university. Also when immersing photos into each blog post, I made sure to enter alt tags for each one. This greatly improved my rankings among Google search.

However, something that I found very interesting was the small difference in my marketing score in the Crawler FX report. When first starting out, I received an average score of 54/100. Then after boosting my rankings score, I assumed that my score would sky-rocket; this was not the case. When plugging in my information, I only went up six points to a score of 60/100 and my top of the funnel percent went down to 37%.

To learn a little big more about optimizing your website, page, or post within your site, take a few pointers from Delicious and see what they have to say about SEO.

Google is taking over the world

Today, I have found another reason for why Google is soon going to take over this world and it is Google Webmaster Tools. Yes, we installed this gem of an application to our blogs months ago, but no I did not look to see what it was. Now, I can’t get over how cool it is. I feel like I’m a kid seeing Titanic for the very first time. However, instead of boring you on why I love every part of it, I will give you a few features that definitely will sell you and make you want to attach it to your own site.

Search Queries
     This feature of the site is actually a lot like Google Analytics in the sense that it shows how many impressions and clicks your site has had. However, they differ from one another because analytics shows which keywords that you made yourself and how many clicks those keywords received, but webmaster tools shows the top ranked keywords people are typing in to actually get to your page. The difference is you don’t have to create the keyword for someone to click on your site with webmaster tools.

Links to your Site
     This is definitely one of my favorite features probably because it is one of the most useful. Links to your site is where you can find out who exactly is using your website/blog on their own page. Even though I have a grand total of 3 total links on my page, at least I know who those people are.

Okay now, if those two features didn’t sell you then you can either read more about why you should or check out the site for yourself.

When you think about your favorite store having a Facebook or Twitter, you typically don’t think about who created it, why and especially the regulations for that specific medium. On the contrary, almost every single company that engages in social media has a policy, no matter how small or large. Below, I will show you policies from two completely different companies and show you how they compare and contrast. However, if you would like to see where one of your favorite companies policies, they can be found at SocialMedia.biz

Microsoft
     When you think of Microsoft, you think of software giant and immediately think that someone like them would have endless pages of content on what to do about their social media. However, the software giant has narrowed down their policy to what they call The Channel 9 Doctrine. The purpose of this medium was for their own employees to speak freely and transparently to one another without fear of judgement or ridicule. These nine rules reign supreme when it comes to how they communicate to one another. My favorite rule is number “8. Don’t be a jerk. Nobody likes mean people.”

The Mayo Clinic
     The Mayo Clinic is one of the nations largest public health clinics. People from all over the world are recommended to this non-profit health organization, but did you know they have multiple blogs and YouTube videos? This called for participation guidelines that they created. They encourage others to comment on their blogs and videos, but make sure you read their extensive comment policy before doing so. If you plan on soliciting advertisements or publishing negatively, think again. Your comment will be gone faster than it takes to get recommended to their clinic.

Key Note: Don’t post before reading the fine print.

Of the many types of marketing we encounter on a daily basis, the one I find to be one of the most interesting is fashion marketing/fashion blogs. The reason for this is the fact that this particular industry of marketing has been around since the late 19th to early 20th century newspapers where corsets and pattern selling was all the rage. However, today fashion marketing has taken over as a million dollar industry.

You see it everyday in the latest issue of GQ or Cosmopolitan, in between your favorite television show, and now while surfing on the internet. Fashion marketing is everywhere and is now prominently featured on the internet and also through fashion blogs. If you have ever purchased a piece of clothing from your favorite store online like I have, you probably receive quite a few emails a day introducing the latest sale or trend.In fact, you might even give in sometimes to the “No Shipping Costs-Last Chance” sale right after pay-day.

This is not a fluke. Fashion retailers sometimes require purchasers to provide an email address so then can instill brand awareness and loyalty by the click of a button. These emails may not be catered specifically to an individual, but certain retailers such as Urban Outfitters and J. Crew change the content of their emails to keep their loyal customers loyal. For example, retailers will provide not only sales on certain items, but will provide editors picks, featured items, top-picks by customers, and seasonal updates just to keep customers engaged and also purchasing more product.

Does it work?
According to Direct News Marketing, even in a time of economic turmoil, retailers are seeing improvements in ROI. This is due to the fact that these fashion retailers are giving their consumers a reason to purchase.

For more information on fashion email marketing visit Mailigen and Fashion Brain Academy for some helpful tips.

I would first like to say that I have loved Twitter since I first had to use it my sophomore year for a project. So having to be on Twitter for an entire hour was no chore for me and most of you who will follow me @shanegarvin will find that I tweet and retweet a lot. However, I am going to try and remain objective about the assignment at hand and give a great analysis of what I did in that hour.

The Hour:
In the hour that I was on Twitter (even though it was longer than that), I reconnected with my little from my fraternity, talked about how excited I was for the assignment, and discussed my love for Nando’s Perri Perri restaurant with a friend and suggested another friend to follow their company Twitter. I also noticed that at 5pm a lot of people aren’t really tweeting about much except for how much they hate Mondays and can’t wait for the weekend to be here.

In my honest opinion, Twitter is much better than Facebook for marketers. It’s quick. It’s witty. It’s overall just a better outlet for companies to have one. In fact, at my internship for Gravity Group, one of the clients asked of my opinion about Twitter and if he should use it for his local business. What I told him was that in comparison to Facebook, you don’t have to be each others friends. You can follow a company, celebrity, friend on Twitter, but they don’t have to follow you back. In fact, I follow many businesses just to hear about local deals they have going on or celebrities to see what movie, album, or show is coming out.

In summary, I feel as marketers we should be constantly tweeting, retweeting, and reading others tweets to stay ahead of the game. I guarantee that in future job interviews they will ask about your Twitter and how you use it. I know my past internship asked about mine.

Follow me @shanegarvin

In my search of finding a new theme, I wanted it to reflect my personal style, but also remain professional. The White House theme was actually one of my favorites because of its simplicity and minimalistic style, but I also wanted something a little more sleek. The theme I actually ended up choosing was the Big City 2.28 theme made by Searchperience. Ever since I first created a blog and my Twitter account in my SMAD 341 class, I’ve always been attracted to blue and white themes, so I wanted to continue the trend with a more professional feel.

One of the the only changes that occurred when switching the theme of my page is the fact that Big City doesn’t have it’s own link on the dashboard, which is one of the reasons why I was so attracted to the White House theme. However, I like the fact that I can change the top image to anything that I want. Other than that, no other changes occurred, which is good because I’m already so familiar with this format.

When I graduate in May, I plan on keeping my blog because I want to incorporate it into my professional career. Social media has been such a big part of my stay here at JMU and I really  needed a theme to reflect how I want to portray myself that included my professional side, but also a personal side. That has what has gotten me to this point in my college career is the fact that I always like to put my personal experiences and style into everything that I do so my professors, colleagues, and future employers can get a sense of who I am. Hopefully those who read my blog during this semester can also get a sense for who I am as well.