Deconstruct an Article Promotion

Today I wanted to talk about article promotion and show you a great example I have seen on Instagram. Article promotions are like the only links I will click on these days! I don’t mind reading articles about things I am interested in, but as soon as it hits to an advertisement or learn more tab, I am OUT!

So the great example of article promotion I wanted to share is by a company called “HudaBeauty” run by beauty pro Huda Kattan. She is the face of her brand and is recognized by makeup lovers all over the world. And I mean all over the world for a reason because she promotes her makeup tips and tricks as well as products in English and Arabic, so she has a pretty far reach in the market. I love watching her Youtube videos and seeing her articles promotion posts on Snapchat, she does a wonderful job in directing traffic to her website. She gives off a genuine feel in all that she posts. She also promotes her makeup tricks through her Instagram. Most of her posts are showing off other peoples work with her products but occasionally she will post her video of a tutorial or a makeup swatch or how a new product works. She then will put the link to that expanded post for her website in her biography link in her Insta profile. This is just the nature of Instagram that live links can only be put in the profile section, not the actual post itself. So here is here latest post about How To Clean False Lashes

As you can see, she posted the How To video and the link is inherently bio. When you click the link it follows to her website where the original post is. Heres the link if you want to check it out followed by the site screenshots. HudaBeauty

So I think she did a great job with promoting her Instagram and website. The Instagram video is in her site article and the Instagram page links to her article. I would say her social media channels are all interwoven and that is really important. That is definitely a strength in how HudaBeauty shares their posts. Her image is consistent across the two sites. She keeps her color scheme of black white and pink with Huda Kattan being the main person. Some weaknesses I see are that the posts is pretty short on the website. I think there is more info about how to clean the lashes in the video than the actual article so its almost redundant to have a whole other article about it on the website. I think the fact that her article is short could be a strength and a weakness. I know I like her other articles because they are short and to the point and not painfully long or repetitive, thats why I like reading them. In this case though, the video has more info than the actual article. When posting a video in an article I think the article should expand on what is shown or talked about in the video so that they are complimentary. I also like that on her site there are relevant related articles suggested on the sidebar and at the end. There are no ads for random clickbait sites and I really appreciate that. I also don’t know if this is a strength or weakness but I think it is strange that the title of the article is different on the site than what the title of the video is on Instagram? Like shouldn’t they be the same? What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks for reading and hope this gives you some ideas and inspiration for your next round of article promotion posting! Thoughts and comments are welcome below!

Deconstruct a Brand

Bath and Body Works is a great brand! It’s the spot you want to avoid walking by at the mall with your wife because this store just draws all women into it.

So to talk about the brand…

Some of the brands strengths are that their logo and design is instantly recognizable. They have a blue plaid print bag that all purchases go home in with pink text of the company’s name. This is shown in their Facebook profile picture. The pink text keeps it fun and girly and like its a special purchase. The plaid is recognizable, I think it gives it a “country” down to earth feel also that older women can identify with as well as young girls too. The blue plaid is a refreshing color, a universally liked color, and reaches across ages.

Bath and Body Works is also very consistent across their social media channels. Facebook and Instagram are the most impressive. Their photography is similar if not the same photos ( this could be a strength or weakness, depending on how you look at it ) and they keep their fun and special feeling in both social media platforms

 

Some of the brand weaknesses are that their content is not too varied across their social media accounts. I think that their pink square with text is a little outdated, the text is kind of old. It could be updated to be more modern.

I think the composition of most of their posts on social media have great composition and grid use. The two posts above from FB and Insta have an organized layout, their colors are great on the eyes and unified. It looks like the perfumes are lain out in a diamond array on a grid, so that is great. I think there could be more contrast in their photos, the colors are starting to blend together a bit. There is an obvious color scheme in their recent photo series, pastels and jewel tones in girly colors like blue and pink and purple.

Anyway, i think Bath and Body does a great job unifying their social media and their posts. I think their logo could be updated, as they are updating the design of many of their fragrances and lotions and the years go on. I think they could have more variety in their posts across their channels and still keep them unified. But they do an amazing job showcasing their product and creating an inviting and fun aura around what they sell.

So Many Things About Social Media I Didn’t Know Before This Week

This week I made some changes for my website so I could make it a more user friendly and informative experience. The biggest improvement I made was creating a Facebook and Instagram page for TopKnotch Knobs! I am really excited about this update! I think because I created the pages, it just made my business a whole lot more permanent. I am more committed to this business since I made pages for them and I want them to be high quality and functioning for the public.

topknotchknobs.com

Things I learned in the process

• Instagram has Analytics! So cool. I love that its simple and to the point and relatively inexpensive
• I really like posting from Instagram and connecting those posts to other pages. Visual is very important when trying to gain likes and impressions. More people respond to pictures and emojis in posts rather than text only posts.
• I included meta tags in my website for Google and that was a learning experience! I still don’t completely get how they work but I know they are important and will be looking to add more to my site code.
• Found out how to repost other peoples content and give them credit. I did it through a great app. Allows me to add content to my Instagram without coming up with all of it on my own and creates a community feel to the page
• Also found a post scheduling app, have yet to try it though…
• Trying to add content to all my pages- Facebook, Instagram, Website blog… then I will promote them through social media boosting.

Next improvement to check on- gotta make sure my POS is working right and that I can accept payments correctly! Should have taken care of that earlier but now ti more of a priority for me and I feel more knowledgeable about online business.

That’s what I learned this week! It was a lot of learning on my own and I think that was really effective. now that I have a good idea of what I am supposed t be doing I can research it and try things out and improve.  I love that I don’t have to take a formal class to make my pages greater, even though a BYUI class is where I got my start. Its awesome so far! Real world experience right on my laptop!

Thanks for reading- Please, if you have any suggestions for my blog or my website SHARE IN THE COMMENTS! I would love any constructive positive advice!

Making Your Business Social Media Friendly

SOCIAL MEDIA IS EVERYTHING. How else do you expect to be found and to grow? I think it is absolutely vital to have social media connections from your products site to your social media. If people find your site and want to see more they will got o your social media. If someone finds you on social media they may go to your site if they are really interested in what you have to offer. Websites are found through social media and through your network of friends. I rarely come across a random AWESOME site or product on my own, its usually through those I know and follow personally and online. To get your site’s social media off the ground, first you have to find out who is looking for your product or service. Who is in the market to buy? Now where do they go online? Is it Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, blogs, Pinterest, etc. Now what are they looking for and what do they like or not like, what are the demographics? This is important info to find if you want to be able to target your dream customer. You have to know them first!

Some important tools for finding out these things

• Google Trends- who is searching what at what time of year/week/day/hour and where are they at?
• Google Analytics form your website-this has tons of information for you to get to know your users.
• Search out the competition- what are they doing right and wrong? How can YOU do better? Then go make it happen

Other tips for creating Social Media content: If you want to get a greater following you have to be posting at least once every 2 days, once a day ideally. It also takes about a year to create a substantial amount of content for your site and to get going. You have to be dedicated to putting that work in. Always use action words in descriptions and ads, it invites potential customers to take action and to come and see what you are talking about. -Buy, Purchase, Subscribe, Share, Shop Now… etc.

 

These are all things to consider when starting out in social media marketing. Good luck to you and I!

Adwords Launched and Website Running

As you may have seen from my last post, my site is finally up and running! Still improving it and working on some parts but it is FUNCTIONAL! —–>   TOPKNOTCHKNOBS.COM   Its really exciting, I feel accomplished! The most exciting part about this week was seeing my Analytics actually be useful since there was some traffic to my site. it was also cool to see the stats on my Adwords campaign jump because I finally activated it and now my site shows up on Google! Launching Adwords was fairly easy once I got all my keywords in that I wanted and I learned how to write ads. Honestly I felt that I had good ads to start off with and I will be making more to practice and improve that skill. I think I learned the most this week with building my site and taking care of little details there. I had to do a ton of work on the site to get it going so that I could run my ads. I didn’t want to have a crappy site advertised on Google and have people be not impressed. They probably still aren’t haha because its an amateur site but it needed to be working. So i learned ab lot about working on a Wix site and visited many help pages! I learned how to implement Square and PayPal into my shopping carts, I learned how to implement an app that blocks people from right clicking on your images and saving them without your permission (I don’t have a ton of high quality work or anything but my photos of my products are mine and I don’t want others taking them). I learned so many things this week, from class and much more on my own. Lots going on and lots of new developments!

Google Analytics

Learning about Analytics this week was really great! I saw how powerful this tool can be. Not just for my site but also as a businessperson in general, if you know Analytics you can get certified and become a great asset wherever you go. I haven’t had too much traffic to my site so it was hard to comprehend exactly how valuable the program is but I know it’s very detailed, even more so than WordPress statistics which I monitor pretty often for my site here. Analytics was really easy to set up for Wix, my host site. I didn’t have to copy and paste and possibly mess up the code, I just typed in the short digit code from Analytics and it was ready to go. I also linked my Adwords account too, we will see how that goes when I get my ads going. All together it was a really great learning experience and I’m excited to learn more about it. 

Google Advertising

Learned a lot about using Google Adwords and creating advertisements to show on Google. Its such a. Simple thing to create but it is challenging to fit your whole company or product into 3 or 4 lines and make an impact on potential buyers! Every word has to be precise and clean and the phrases have to flow. Your condensed message really has to grab attention but also reflect what you are selling well enough for people to stay interested. Starting out, I found it the most easy to grab attention with a sale headline of 15% off. I couldn’t think of much else and I feel like people wouldn’t be interested in my new site unless I had something to offer and differentiate from already established sites and companies. As I publish more ads I will see what works and what doesn’t. It was cool to experiment with this important part of running an online business. 

Legalities and License Madness

This week was a lot more challenging for me. I can make changes on websites and I can be creative, but figuring out legal systems, taxes, and licenses was difficult. I learned about different types of business on a surface level and I learned that there is an endless amount of licenses and permits to apply for and tax numbers to get and apply. Its a mess! How do business owners figure it all out and assure that they have all the proper paperwork to run their business without incurring a fine? It seems like a ton of work! Thankfully online business is a bit easier to deal with, less to account for and require permits for and such.

The main material I learned this week as what an LLC and Sole Proprietorship is, and some basic ways to look up the requirements for a beginning business. LLC’s and Sole Proprietorship are how a business is structured. A SP is an individual who is self employed and the owner of a small business and one who takes on all the risk and responsibility of the business on their self. It is a simple way to run a business. You are the boss, you call the shots, you do all the work, you are in contact with customers, you pay taxes… and you also stand in for the business when something goes wrong. You ARE your business and if something goes wrong, if there are debts to pay or someone sues you, there is no buffer because you are the business entity. Bu there is very little paperwork to fill out and its very simple to get started and is a prime choice for those who have a low risk product and are operating on a small scale. Not much can go wrong there and its not too overwhelming. An LLC is a business structure that is a mix of a partnership and a corporation. It is a more flexible business model and is for a bigger operation and most likely more than one owner. I have chosen to go with a SP for my small online business because I don’t really need a partnership and I am very small beginning entity. I have a low risk product of drawer handles and cabinet  knobs. I think this will be the best way to go!

I have more research to do on obtaining the proper requirements for this business but there aren’t too many. Ready to go!

Site Builders and Hosting

This week I explored the wonderful complications of choosing a site builder for my online business and a host for the site. There were so many options and things to consider! I felt a little lost at first. I learned a lot though. I knew that I needed a place to build my site. I did not know where to find that though. I also thought that hosting was built in or like the same thing. BUT THEY ARE NOT. They can be separate and they are different. I looked at iPage, HostGator, Weebly, and Word press for hosting and I am still looking for a good solution. I was impressed by WordPress the most for price and service. My problem is that I only need a website for 3 months and not many places want to host that, or the price starts getting steep. For site building, I liked Weebly and WordPress. Weebly is for anyone really. I think WordPress is for people whoa re already experienced in WordPress, which I am, so it takes some time to get used to and I don’t recommend it to everyone. Many hosting sites offered Adwords and search engine SEO credit, which was a huge perk to signing with some servers. Overall, I am going to do some more research to pick a  final site but I know I want to stick with WordPress if I can. Those are my thoughts from this week!

Embarking On An Unknown Quest

It ‘s been a long time since I have posted on my school WordPress, but I have returned! My 20 month break is at an end and I am back to posting about my thoughts and progress in my education in Communications and Business. This semester I was SO excited to have been able to get into a small online class called Web Business Creation. I knew I wanted to take this class because running an online business is one of my dreams! I think it would be just so great. I knew I had to get a spot if possible. I’m two weeks into the class now and its been an eye opening experience. My parents own their own business and I have been pretty involved with it throughout my whole life and I have seen the struggles and complications. But now a similar opportunity is before me. I know that if I actually learn something from this class, this will not be my one and only online business, and I know my piece of entrepreneurship is a lot smaller than my parents business, but its a start and I identify with it well. There is just so much detail involved! I am grateful I’m taking a class to figure it all out even though its a little complicated. I think the main lesson I am taking away this week is that I have a lot to learn still, but I have to jump in and jut go for it right away! I cant make up for what I don’t know so I might as well get to work. Its been enlightening to learn about the different types of business models out there and the different approaches people take to create a need for a product or service. Ideas are endless and there are so many ways to approach making money online. I am excited to continue t learn more and I will keep you updated. Until next week…