Social Media Design Toolkit – FREE online live class

If you register today you can get a free two day course regarding social media. The cost is normally $79. According to the Creative Live site “you’ll learn how to combine engaging images, fundamental Photoshop skills, and your own artistic point-of-view to make your social media presence more visually engaging and unique. You’ll also learn how to work both with and around the design limitations of social networking sites. Janine will cover ways to create eye-catching Facebook cover photos, distinctive Twitter backgrounds, and YouTube channels that look great on any device, from smartphones to televisions. Janine will also provide a complete set of templates and design instruction guides for every top social media site, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.”

You can RSVP here. The class is May 12th and 13th.

My opinion on WordPress vs. Squarespace

In my content management class we have created websites using both wordpress and squarespace. I find both of them to be very different from each other and it was actually difficult for me to go from one platform to another without getting a bit confused. I enjoy using wordpress because there are a variety of plugins available but I have found some of the plug in to be buggy and do not work the way I expected them to. I also really like the variety of templates that wordpress has to offer. The possibilities really seem endless. The one thing I’m having a hard time trying to figure out is how to make the wordpress site look more like a website than a blog. I’m sure I’ll find some good plugins in the future to assist me with this. So this brings me to what I really liked about squarespace. The templates are very limited in my opinion but the ones I worked with are very nice. They let you design a page just like what you see by just editing the content and photos. It was really easy to get started. To customize it was a little more difficult for me but there is a very helpful video that will walk you through the steps on how to create a more customized look. Once I got the hang of it I really enjoyed using squarespace. Some of the features I thought were great was how easily it was to add a gallery slide show, customizing the font size and color and background. I also thought it was great they let you easily add a donate button for such sites as non-profit organizations. If I had to choose which website builder to use at this moment in time, I would choose squarespace because I found it easier to use and to update. I also think it would be much easier for someone to maintain that has zero web site building experience.

Five helpful articles on SEO.

1. On-page SEO tips on the Social Media Today site is a great article that tells you exactly how you should use keywords, headers/titles, alt tags and content to help with on page SEO. I found this article useful because it gives you some ideas on tools to use to assist you with your on page SEO.

2. Five SEO tools that will increase visitors to your website is a good article that gives tips and tools to effectively increase visitors to your website. The content is very helpful but also the comments at the bottom of the article have some great tips on SEO too.

3. 5 SEO tools every blogger should have provides tips and tools to using better keywords, no broken links and a speed checker so your site doesn’t take ages to load. It also discusses keyword positioning and meta tag generator. These tools are very helpful with SEO for your site.

4. This article I found on Forbes called SEO is not dead and will never die  is basically saying that everything you do to your site, writing a blog or updating it is essentially performing SEO to your site. A quote taken from the article says “The fact remains we’ll still be performing activities designed to get business from the natural search results in search engines, and therefore SEO will be alive and kickin’.” Unless you never touch your website again, it will always be alive and kickin! This article also uses a nice infographic that is both funny and informative.

5. This article I found interesting on how to get started with search engine optimization explains how search engines work. It also addresses that you need a good page title, page content and good meta data and how to put it all together.

3 graphic design and multimeda websites, critiquing the on page SEO

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I am currently creating a portfolio and am researching and critiquing other websites that have similar content.

1. A website that offers services for webdesign and social media that I was checking out is a very simple site that is easy to navigate and has good on page search engine optimization. The site is called safari.to. Each of the services they offer have a nice brief description which include keywords relevant to that service. The heading on each service is exactly what is needed for good on page SEO. The URL is clearly indicating that they offer services. Even though there are no photos and not a lot of content, the content that is on their site seems to be great for helping them be found.

2. A graphic design website called MarisaPassos seems to be lacking on page SEO. The home page has no text whatsoever, only an animated graphic. There are a few good header words on the services page but there is no description or keywords describing exactly what this person does. Clicking into the portfolio brings up photos of the work done but there is no description on what method was used to create the product. When I roll my mouse over the photos there are no alt tags or anything to help SEO. I think this site could more on page SEO.

3. 1minus1 is an awesome website that is both beautiful and has great on page SEO. The URLs, content and header tags are perfectly worded. The only thing that I might change would be to add alt tags to the photos to help with on page SEO but this website is the best one I have come across for on page SEO.

Recommending my Social Media Marketing for the Web class located in St. Louis, MO

I am entering my final week of the Social Media Marketing for the Web class and I wanted to post a blog about how useful the class has been. We have learned about all the social media sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Youtube. We covered how important they are for businesses and advertising. We got our HootSuite Professional Certification which I think will help us stand apart from others who are looking for the same type of work. I would recommend students, business owners (especially those who are new to owning a business), non-profit organizations or anyone just looking to learn more about Social Media marketing to enroll in the class. It’s at St. Charles Community College in St. Charles, MO. The classes will be held in the evening which I think is perfect for people who work during the day. It’s only one night a week from 7:00pm-9:50pm so it won’t take up too much time. I highly recommend it.

5 articles on how to develop an effective Social Media Strategy

Below I have provided some links of articles that I think are important on developing an effective social media strategy.

8 Quick Tips on mashable.com for Developing a Facebook Marketing Strategy gives good examples of how to develop a Facebook marketing strategy.

The Social Media Strategy Cheatsheet has a very informative infographic on creating an effective social media strategy.

Planning Your Social Media Strategy? Take a Cue from GE is an article written on forbes.com about how GE engages their audiences through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and more and how they all work together.

3 Steps to an Effective Social Media Strategy shows tips for putting a strategy together.

Why You Need To Treat Your Social Media Strategy Like Your Content Strategy gives 9 tips How To Sync Your Content & Your Social Strategy.

Using Jimmy Fallon’s idea for my school project

Recently Jimmy Fallon had his viewers send photos of their pets doing weird things using instagram. He wanted people to use the hashtag #mypetisweird and he featured his favorite on his show. You can see his favorites in this video here. It’s totally hilarious.

For my Social Media class the instructor wanted us to figure out a way to incorporate this into our class projects. I am working with the non-profit group Room to Read, the St. Louis Chapter, and I created a Pinterest page with several boards and many pictures. They vary from covers of books (that were published by Room to Read) to students from all over the world. I would take Jimmy Fallon’s concept of having people find their favorite photo either on the Pinterest site or on the Room to Read site and have them re-pin it to a board on Pinterest called “Favorites” and if they would like to comment on why it’s their favorite that would be great. I think this could be a fun way to get people to view the photos of what people donate their money to and see how children from all over the world benefit from those donations. 

How I would market my Social Media class using social media.

In my Social Media class we are learning about how to market businesses using various social media platforms. If I was going to market my Social Media class I would start by thinking about which platforms let me interact with the most people. Facebook and Twitter both enter my mind. I would begin by having students and/or the instructor post on the school’s Facebook page about joining the class. I would include things about why this class is important to take and the various things that are covered. It would be nice to have details of the class as opposed to just a very vague description that is included in the course catalog. There are a lot of students that frequent the schools Facebook page and this could get a lot of interaction and a good conversation. I would also create a specific Facebook page for the class so if people have questions and want to talk about it in more depth this would be a good place for that to occur. Current and past students could join and describe some of the things they have learned and how it has benefited them with their job situations or how they have used it to market other things.

I would also post on the school’s Twitter account as this would be a good platform for interaction as well. All of the students who follow the school’s hashtag on Twitter would see these tweets and it might be something that interests them. I would cover the same things that are covered on the Facebook page. I would also follow various social media experts and businesses and hope that they would follow me back and retweet the information that is tweeted about the class. I would ask other students who enjoyed taking the class to help market the class to follow me and to retweet the information.

YouTube could be a powerful platform to use for marketing a class about Social Media. I would create a short video (about one to two minutes) of students talking about how this class has benefited them and have the students show their projects and work that they have completed. I would make sure it included why a class about social media marketing is so important and give examples of how it can help you promote a business. I would then post a link to my video on the Facebook and Twitter page.

The Role of Social Media and Technology in the Boston Marathon Tragedy

Great article on the role of tragedy and social media.

Jason Douglas's Life Blog

April 15, 2013 is a day which will not be forgotten for generations to come. A terrorist attack occurring at mile 26, near the end of the Boston Marathon has changed countless lives and altered history. 

Social media played a significant role in the tragedy. That was not the surprising part. Many people found out about the evolving tragedy on a social media channel (including myself). Quickly, images of the first and second explosion surfaced followed by images of the seriously injured. Video of both explosions were spreading fast through Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Vine videos even made an appearance. 

The act of sharing photos and videos was not a surprise. The location of the blasts coupled with the mass amount of people watching the final steps of the marathon looking for loved ones with their phones and cameras out created a perfect storm for documenting the tragedy. The average…

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How to use social bookmarking for business.

Online marketers know that when it comes to promoting your business on the web, it’s all about the traffic. The more traffic you obtain to your site, the higher the probability of turning your visitors into customers. Social bookmarking sites get your website indexed by leading search engines and therefore your site will appear when people search for those keywords. With social bookmarking sites, you get high-quality links which are indexed by search engines for free. The best part about these social bookmarking services is that they are a continuous feed for search engines. They are always working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Social Bookmarking websites offer not only large quantity of traffic but quality traffic. Therefore, there’s more targeted traffic on your website and there’s a higher chance that you’ll be able to retain visitors on your site. If you use social bookmarking correctly you will find that traffic to your website increases significantly. Below are some tips on how you can optimize social bookmarking.

-Make sure that each piece of content you bookmark is optimized for keywords. You want to create keywords so be sure to include them in your title/heading, your description, and your tags.

-Join some social bookmarking sites such as stumbleupon, delicious, digg, and redditt and start bookmarking your links.

-It is also important that you create a network with each of these sites, if you follow people then hopefully they will follow you back.

Social bookmarking can make a huge impact, it can improve your customer base, improve your page link and increase your traffic with quality traffic.