The post (Process post 9): Marketing and Publishing For Your Audience first appeared on Self Therapy.
Monthly Archives: November 2022
The Digital Footprint.
Leaving a digital footprint almost seems unavoidable. Anywhere you go, someone always asking for something… especially when you go shopping.
I found after reading Norman’s (2016) post on trying to avoid leaving a digital trail, completely relatable. Almost every shopping mall and or store asks you for your email, your phone number, and or some type of contact information. I find it nearly impossible to have a trip to the mall that does not include some type of contracting information question.
Everything needs to be digitalized.
Some stores try to promote their digital footprint by indicating they will send deals and discounts to the contact address. Therefore, if you are willing to give stores the contact information then you specifically will benefit from receiving secret information.
With that, I feel like the idea of using or giving digital information has become the preferred method.
I have come to realize, that the idea of using cash at some stores almost seems to be ridiculous. Many times, I have offered cash to the store attendees and have found they almost looked surprised, like “really, you want to pay with cash?”. Honestly, I have gotten to the point where every time I want to pay with cash, I seem to always ask the working attendee if it’s okay if I pay with cash as if cash is a foreign payment.
With the strong push for consumers to pay by credit and with debit cards, cash almost seems like a burden. I find it becomes awkward as some employees make it feel like it is an inconvenience. Several card payment options include simple tap features or slide features, making transactions quick and easy.
To some extent, I think the peak of Covid-19 had a lot to factor into avoiding cash payments. Cash payments require a type of contact exchange. Thus, stores were trying to minimalize physical exchanges. Although I understand that contactless payments avoid physical exchanges it makes it hard to reverse the mindset that cash exchanges are bad.
Now, I have found that several stores and companies now push for contactless payments. Stores have created this by having signs indicating a preference for consumers using a card method of payment or having signs indicating they don’t accept cash payments. Therefore, pushing consumers to leave digital footprints on basic transactions.
Overall, I find digital footprints unavoidable. They are everywhere.
References
Norman, S. (2016, March 7). Trying not to drop breadcrumbs in Amazon’s store. Publishing @ SFU. https://publishing.sfu.ca/2016/03/breadcrumbs-of-data/
Understanding analytics, understanding your consumers
Understanding analytics and consumer habits is such a crucial factor to being a successful content creator and business owner. As I dive deeper into the growth and marketing side to business I have begun taken much more notice into these processes. I have just recently started utilizing the analytics functions for my sites but it has been super helpful when it comes to understanding the way people interact and navigate your site/platform. Something I have noticed for myself is that my general site navigation needs to be optimized, when your site entices users to continue to explore and consume the job is being done and I found that through analytical assessment there are certain categories that tend to block users from continuing. With this new information I have made alterations and look forward to reassessing in a few weeks to see the results.
Week 10: Process Post
Within the prompt of this week’s process post, I will evaluate it from the standpoint of a creator and a user.
Analytics have proved to be very useful for many to strategically develop engaging content to share. Back when I was active on my fan Instagram account I would use the analytics to discern that 12pm was the best time to post. Additionally, I was able to garner from engagement data that 6 images in a collage worked best for my theme. However, when I was working my co-op jobs as a digital marketing assistant — analytics rarely factored into any actionable strategies. What usually happened was that analytics were just to be reported to the bosses. Personally, I find analytics to be an insightful tool, however it should not inform everything a content creator does.
On the other hand, when it comes to my experience as an end user — analytics about me cause anxiety. It is a modern dilemma amid the digital age — that everything we do is trackable and is providing data to various companies. I find myself outraged when I come across toxic social media posts in my feeds. I ask myself: why is the algorithm showing me this? I subsequently block these accounts, however I fear that going threw that extra step to block toxic social media accounts is actually feeding the algorithms to show me more of these types of content. Additionally, I am a very private person, so it is always stressful visiting sites and handing out my personal information. I recognize that this is the digital world we live in, but it is definitely tiresome and even worrisome.
Mini Assignment #5: Online Self Infographic
Within the prompt of this mini assignment, I have created this infographic to illustrate my online self.
It was very easy to discern that YouTube takes up most of my online usage. Even when I am doing something I always have a YouTube video on in the background.
Social media was also very easy to identify as a major time consumer when online. Platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram are always being checked. Whenever I bored the first thing I do is check social media. Worse then that, the first thing I do when I wake up is go on social media.
Next was gaming. I am an avid gamer so this was a no-brainer. In my free time I will usually be playing a multiplayer game like Destiny 2, League of Legends, Valorant, etc.
Penultimately, movie and television streaming services come up next. Admittedly, this use to be much higher; but in recent years my usage of streaming services like Netflix have dwindled. I mostly just use them to watch new episodes of shows. I rarely binge watch anymore.
Finally, web browsing is an all encompassing umbrella for general internet usage. Whether this be online shopping, researching something, etc.
Processing Technology.
Last week, I was working on making a remix. Honestly, I had no idea what to do with the word remix. When I thought about remixing, all I could think about was music. Music is where the artists blend two or more songs to create a new sound.
Thompson’s (2022) article explores the acceleration of the internet and the changing of the word lingo. From Thompson’s perspective, I can understand the confusion. I feel like the new slang words in social media are constant. I find I am constantly learning and adapting to the newest and trending sayings.
Yes, the word “remix” is not exactly new, but the idea to remix things other than music, is a foreign idea to me.
To gain insight into remixes, I set out to do some research.
When I first went beyond a remixing song in the way of collaboration, I thought about remixing lyrics. Meaning, adding new words, rhythms, and rhymes to the popular trending lyrics. Thus, putting a twist on Gen Z slang (Thompson, 2022). What I quickly realized was trying to remix music was out of my realm of expertise.
Next, I thought about poems and making a collage using only old magazines and newspapers. When I thought about this concept, it brought up a lot of memories of my old childhood bedroom. I use to cover the walls and hang the weirdest collages from my ceiling just so I could be surrounded by my interests.
All through this idea seemed great in theory, (who doesn’t love a good collage?) I realized that I have not owned a glue stick in YEARS. So…
Onto the next idea.
While I was flipping through my camera roll on my phone, I started laughing at all my old videos and pictures. I was getting a good laugh at watching the memories back. One video that I watched a couple of times was about my parents finding out I got a tattoo.
When I rewatched the video and saw my parent’s facial expressions I knew I wanted to remix it.
When I was thinking about the different ways of remixing, I could just hear a specific TikTok audio. (Oh No).
Before merging the two, I could tell the original audio mimicked the TikTok song. I knew the video and the audio would match up and create something funny.
Next, all I had to figure out was how to combine the video and the audio.
TikTok seemed to be the place.
Although TikTok is a trending app, I feel completely intimated by it. As Thompson (2022) indicates the internet world is changing for the new generation.
After playing around with the audio and the video footage, I was able to crop the pieces accordingly to make a concise video.
The original video contained a whole introduction and then the revealing of the tattoo. Whereas, the remixed version only showcases a snippet of my parent’s (mainly my mom’s) initial reaction to seeing my tattoo.
Overall, I found using different technology outlets challenging as it was new to me. However, after trial and error, the process produced a funny remix. Without the assignment, I would have not gotten the opportunity to remix the video.
References
Thompson, D. (2022, May 16). Is the internet changing how we talk about slang words? In The Know. https://www.intheknow.com/post/slang-words-tiktok-gen-z-linguist/?guccounter=1
Find Me On The Second Page
This week in POSIEL we focused on using Google Analytics and SEO on our websites, and all of the data that this plug-in can provide. Therefore, this week I focused on setting up my Google Analytics account (properly this time), so that I can view and utilise this information accordingly. A few weeks ago (likely...
Trying Something New? UnderRated.
The Real-Time Activity Online and Offline
After reading through this week’s reading of Pod Academy’s about Digital Breadcrumbs, I wanted to reflect on how I made the personal challenge this week to avoid social media and spending numerous hours scrolling on my phone as a user. One major point was when I found myself bored of completing (or not completing) the task that I was working on, I realized how I subconsciously unlocked my phone, swiped to the next page of my home screen where my social media apps were, and tapped Instagram. It was that simple and moments later I found myself quickly shutting off my phone and placing it aside me facedown in shock that I did the motions once again.
The line in the article that discusses how our daily actions are monitored and that “we willingly tag ourselves in specific locations through social media platform[s]” (Pod Academy, 2016), this reminded me of how my friends and I use the new social media app, BeReal. BeReal is a social media app that sends a notification once a day for those to stop what they are doing at the moment and take an image. Not only does this image get taken from the front-facing camera, but also the back-facing camera. The image is timestamped, then users can choose whether or not they would like to tag their location. Before publishing, users can choose to post only to their friends or on the community page where it can be shared publicly. If one does not share within 2 minutes of the sent notification, then the posting will have a timestamp stating how late they were.
Timestamp and location to share with your friends?! This easily shows where one is at a given moment in time. What I find even creepier is that if the person decided to share the location where they took the image, it tells you how far away that person is from you. Unless you would want to meet up with a particular friend, I’d think sharing this information on the community page with the public can be quite dangerous. Now think even further that on Snapchat, if the user chooses to share their location, this updates in real-time when the person is on the app. Have I been found cyberstalking my friends to see if they are hanging out without me, possibly, and I’m pretty sure many others have as well; what are the positives that this kind of feature really has? Overall, I’m starting to think that maybe it is time that I step away from social media for a while; not only for it being a distraction but for the time it wastes away from me focusing on myself.
Reflecting on the content-creator side for this week, I decided that I wanted to keep my website ad-free and unmonetized. The content of my website is about people telling their authentic stories about themselves and with placed advertisements. I feel that this would take away from the realness I want to convey with my content if there are banners on my site creating a distraction away from the actual content. If I decide that I would like to place monetization on my website in the future, one aspect I would take advantage of is some of the discussions that take place in some of the articles written; this could be about a brand, company, music artist or a location of a specific restaurant. This way, advertisements would not seem as jarring and can seamlessly fit into the content itself. PROJECT: Offline is not intended to be a place for product placement or branding opportunity unless the person spoken to is building their brand themselves. To keep my PROJECT: Offline genuine, my focus needs to remain on showcasing real people and their real stories…
How does one analyze something with no data to analyze?
(Week 10)
Alright, Google analytics, I get it. It’s important for sure, however, there is a caveat…
There are no stats when there are no viewers 
.
I’m trying, I swear! I guess I shouldn’t sell myself short though because in reality What the Cat Said has struck a goldmine with all 7 of its users:
These impressive stats are only in the last 7 days. What say we take a look at the last month?
That’s pretty good! 7 to 15 users is not so bad… right? But 15 does not a good sample size make. Anyhow, looking at the bounce rate, it’s pretty low so it seems as though people are generally staying longer than a couple of seconds or navigating to more than one page! The session duration also shows the average session per user is 6 minutes and 38 seconds! That time is roughly the length of reading one/maybe 2 articles. I feel like that’s pretty good!
Let’s take a look to see if we are retaining our audience:
This looks kind of floppy. Ideally, I would like to have more visitors returning, however, it’s probably a good thing that we have new users?
A statistic I found interesting was device usage. It seems that 75% of our audience is mobile! This is cool, but it is interesting because much of the content that is posted (public posts anyway) is about things that happen on computers, aka comp. sci. Yes, yes I know that mobile devices are computers. Well here are the device stats:
And unsurprisingly, the most viewed pages are the public and process anchor pages:
In the end, even though the sample size is small, it was kind of informative to understand what is happening to this site outside of the publishing itself.
Anywho, perhaps I’ll look into these stats again once the semester ends.
Hope to see you again (got to pump up those stats)!
Mini Assignment #5
All about me!
Very Informative Content.
(Week 10)
Let’s see how our site is doing with this fancy infographic:
As you can see, not much has happened. Bye!
Mini-Assignment #5: My Online Self
Mini-Assignment #5: My Online Self
Preface
As part of the class that I am taking which has resulted in the creation of the website you are viewing, I must complete some mini-assignments.
This post is one of those mini-assignments.
For this assignment, we were asked to create an infographic summarizing our online selves.
What I created is below!
The Infographic
Putting Yourself Out There
Aside from the astronomical amount of homework I seem to have collected in the past two weeks, I’ve really been enjoying running this blog over the past few months. It’s a really nice creative outlet that allows me to reflect on my own experiences as well as a reason to kick myself in the butt a little bit in terms of leaving my room and learning to cook with my mom. I’ve really enjoyed the experience, and having the opportunity to share that through this platform is actually a lot less nerve wracking than I thought it might be. Furthermore, as I’ve been applying for co-op jobs, this site has been an invaluable resource and incredibly helpful in demonstrating my experience and skills with website design and copywriting to potential future employers.
Something that hasn’t really crossed my mind in the past little while is the concept of SEO. In my past job when I worked for WIFTV, the site I was running had a built in SEO plugin. It would scan each page of the site and provide suggestions in order to make the site more SEO friendly and easier to find for the general audience. It was a super useful tool, and something I’ve been considering downloading for my own site. While for me, my site has been wonderfully easy to run, I have not really done much to make it easily discoverable. As Sam Hollingworth outlines in his article “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO“, there are numerous benefits to using SEO for your site.
Some of the reasons outlined in Hollingworth’s article I already knew, such as the idea that SEO can help make your site more discoverable through organic searches by an audience. What I was not necessarily aware of was how SEO can provide information on audience preferences, which is something that I believe would be well worth knowing if I want to keep this blog going in the future.
Works Cited
Hollingsworth, Sam. April 13, 2018. “12 Reasons Why You Business Absolutely Needs SEO.” https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
Regarding Monetization: What Can and Should Be Monetized?
Regarding Monetization: What Can and Should Be Monetized?
Did you know you can monetize a wedding?
Many weddings involve large gatherings of people. Those people are an audience, who are all likely to share some similar interests.
Marketers want to capture large audiences with similar interests and they do so by paying for advertisements.
To monetize your wedding, you can sell promotional space to advertisers.
Weddings are expensive so recouping costs by any means possible just makes sense.
Monetize your life
Today, there are opportunities to monetize everywhere.
You can do things such as:
- Leverage your network of friends and sell them products you believe would improve their lives.
- Make above-average content about your everyday life and get sponsored.
- Write a blog like this one and run advertisements.
Now, just because you can monetize everything, should you?
Deciding what to monetize
While it is simple enough to live life in a manner to maximize profits (this is what corporations do), it is not typically the way that most people desire to live their lives.
However, although maximizing profits may not be directly what we want, we can take lessons from corporations and implement them in our own lives.
When faced with the choice of monetization, I think the following:
- What are the costs of monetizing this (social, financial, environmental, etc)?
- What are the benefits of monetizing this (social, financial, environmental, etc)?
- Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
- If yes, is this something I am comfortable monetizing and will not regret in five years?
- If yes, go ahead and monetize.
Choosing whether to monetize or not, really comes down to a cost-benefit analysis and a review of one’s own feelings in regard to the item you are thinking about monetizing.
Conclusion
Always look for creative ways to monetize your life. Your and your friend’s attention and time are valuable, so allow others to pay for it. Have a system to decide what is worth paying for and what is not.
(Mini Assignment 4): Infographics
Process Post #9: Data Trails and Tracking
This week’s process post prompt looks at data trails and tracking. In the early ages of the internet, data tracking was an entirely new concept. Google was one of the most notorious for this when they collected search prompts from users to improve their search engine. Nowadays, almost every single individual on the internet gives up their data in one shape or form—it is nearly impossible for you to not give up your data. Only those who properly do their due diligence may be able to minimize it, but not avoid it entirely. I will be looking at data trails and data tracking from both the perspective of my own audience on Tess Drives and my personal take on how I feel about data trails and the choices I currently make when I am on the internet.
Tess Drives’ Audience
I successfully installed Google Analytics on my website on November 2, 2022. It was a little confusing to get it up and running mostly because the instructions on how to download it wasn’t quite clear in lecture and tutorial. I finally had the “ah ha” moment when I realized the Google Site kit plug in had both Google Analytics and Adsense and you need to go to Google Analytics on the web to access the metrics. I’ve had to help a few colleagues in the class with this as well because we all thought that Google Analytics itself, was a WordPress plug in.
Here is a summary of some of the data from Google Analytics:
In the last 7 days…
Traffic
-100% of page viewers have directly searched my website to land on the webpage
-0% of page viewers have stumbled upon my website through socials (YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram)
-61.1% of page viewers are from USA
-27.8% of page viewers are from Canada
-5.6% of page viewers are from American Samoa
-5.6% of page viewers are from India
-83.3% of page viewers view my website on desktop
-16.7% of page viewers view my website on mobile
Content
-Average duration on my homepage is 4 minutes 48 seconds
-13 page views on my website home page
-4 Views on my contact us page
-2 Views on my about page
What does this data tell me? Well, it gives me a glimpse on how well my website is being perceived by the public. For example, I can see that my website has reached viewers outside of my Pub 101 class judging that 61.1% of my page visits have come from users in the USA. Or, I know that I need to advertise more on my social media platforms to get viewers from my YouTube to head over to my website judging that all of my page viewers have come from directly searching my website rather than being redirected from my social platforms.
On the flip side, some people may find that I am breaching their privacy by tracking these kind of metrics without their permission. I find it odd that there is no automatic disclaimer from Google Analytics to tell my audience that their actions are being tracked on my website. Maybe this is because Google Analytics tracks engagement anonymously? I am unable to view personal information of specific visitors to my page, I am only able to see generated numbers from the tool.
So, is data trails and tracking wrong? In this specific example, I feel like my audience has nothing to worry about. Since I am not gathering personal information such as legal name, age, sex, or location. I am simply trying to learn the skills to create a website and to engage with my audience effectively.
On the other hand, large corporations — especially in social media — gather not only your personal information but track your behaviour online that is associated with your account info to target you with ads and suggested content. This has only come to light in the last decade where Facebook was put on the spotlight for unethically selling Facebook users’ information to third party advertisers in the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal (Confessore, 2018).
The problem with data trails and tracking when it comes to social media and other corporations, the agreement to give up some of your data is buried in thousand-word pages of terms and conditions—which the majority of people just scroll through and click “agree” and get on with their lives.
So I ask again, is data trails and tracking wrong? Morally, it is wrong. But I am no expert on privacy laws in Canada and the United States. To me, I feel like it is impossible to not give up your data nowadays because it has been so convenient for big corporations to use our data and make our lives easier through things like tailoring content online, Smart Home tools like Amazon Alexa, and productivity enhancements such as the Apple ecosystem.
It is evident that if you want to make your lives easier with technology, it will have to come with an expense of giving up some form of data.
Shay’s Opinion and Choices
Nowadays, data is key and companies are willing to pay millions for it. I have come to a point in time where we have become so complacent with giving up my own data to companies to make my daily life easier. For example, under privacy settings in my iPhone, I have nearly every app tracking my location because apps like Starbucks require to have my location tracking on to make it more convenient to locate the nearest Starbucks or to mobile order a coffee. It’s just so much more simpler to give these large corporations the ability to track me to fully benefit from their applications.
A more severe example of giving out my personal information is of course to the company of Tesla. I have set the Tesla app to track my location as “always” since my iPhone is the key for the car. Tesla has advised users to keep the settings like this to allow the car to unlock quicker when I walk up to it.
Something that may seem even more frightening is that I have basically given up my entire rights to Tesla when I am driving the car. I am currently enrolled in the limited early access full self-driving beta program where I have been admitted to use Tesla’s beta software based on my driving habits. You will see in the screenshot that I have included (Autopilot Review, 2022) that in order to use the beta software on the car, I need to “consent to the collection and review of on-going VIN-associated vehicle driving data while enrolled” – essentially, I am granting Tesla to not only spy on me while I am using the software, but they can spy on me and collect data from me while associating the footage with the exact vehicle identification number that was assigned to my vehicle. With all this in mind, I’ve thrown in the towel because who else can say that they are driving a car that is “full self-driving,” to me, it’s entirely worth it. Tesla is clearly using this information further enhance their self-driving software so that it can become fully autonomous and they definitely have better things to do than to spy on me.
All in all, I definitely could care less with how much data I have given to companies such as Tesla. I am able to fully utilize the $15,000 software upgrade to make my car drive itself and I am confident Tesla has better things to do than to spy on me online.
Mini Assignment 5: Infographic
For this Mini Assignment, I decided to make an infographic from the perspective of a salesman trying to sell a Tesla to a potential customer.
Inside Mik’s Mind: An Infographic
This week in POSIEL, we were asked to create an infographic that explains our blog sites. Here’s mine!
The post Inside Mik’s Mind: An Infographic first appeared on Mik's Mind.
Digital Dom- Infographic
Below is a depiction of the main social channels I utilize. I believe they all intertwine in their own way but you gotta start somewhere 
Mini Assignment #5
Who is Kirsten Lifts? Here is an infographic to show you!
Process Post: Google analytics
It was interesting to play around with Google Analytics and seeing how many people are visiting my site.
However, I had trouble going through Google Analytics during the tutorial in lecture today. Not sure why but the interface I saw on my end was really different from what Suzanne was showing.
For example, in the screenshot below, I only have two columns (Suzanne’s has three) and I don’t have a UA code.
Even some of the other stuff like the left side bar is different as well.
Not sure why this is happening…maybe I didn’t connect my site correctly? Or is this a new version of Google Analytics? But then again everyone’s should be the same because its Google…
This wasn’t as intuitive as I had hoped but hopefully we get it figured out!
