Tag Archives: google analytics

The end of a chapter but the beginning of a book

The end of a chapter but the beginning of a book

For as long as I can remember, my camera has always been my side-kick.  Something about being able to capture a moment, an emotion, or a light in turn captured me.  From the beginning of the semester I knew I wanted to create an online space for my photography. In reality, it was the reason I enrolled in PUB 101; while I didn’t lack initiative, I lacked the knowledge and tools to create and curate a platform for my photography.  Finding a domain name and aesthetic was the first challenge.  It was important to have a very visual, professional, and clean blog – a space where images could stand out. Eventually, after much thought, I settled on One More Klick.

One More Klick features a blend of photography, travel, and the outdoors. “Klick” is another word for kilometre, which was very fitting with both the outdoor and travel aspects of tis blog, marking the distance traveled, in addition to klick also being the phonetic sounds of a camera’s shutter.  Since traveling, photography, and the outdoors are a passion of mine, I aspire to always challenge myself by going further, reaching higher, and persevering through the fear of the unknown.  For these reasons, there will always be one more klick – whether it be one more photograph, or one more kilometre.

With the help of photographs taken during various travels and adventures, my blog aims to share the stories behind photos, and provide context.  While some posts feature more personal stories, they still hold some informative content – whether it be in the form of tips and tricks, political context, or specific photography settings to achieve a photograph.

Star BodiesStar Bodies
Flowers on Boat squareFlowers on Boat square
sunrisesunrise

Currently, the majority of the audience reading One More Klick consists of direct family and friends, with some page views coming from countries outside of North America. Some of the perks of traveling abroad include creating friendships and connections across the globe.  Maintaining these friendships are even easier in light of the digital age.  According to the 2018 Digital Media Report, there are over 4 billion active internet users across the globe, and there has been a 13% increase in active social media users since January 2017.  The internet allows for greater connectivity, breaking the barriers of time and space.  In just the touch of a finger, users can connect with anyone, anywhere.  This immediacy has allowed me to connect with people from around the globe in little to no time.  For example, I reached out to Hasham to ask for his permission to post his photograph for the Friends in Foreign Places blog post.  Despite residing in Qatar at the time, within a few hours I received a response and we were connected once again.

This is especially useful for this blog, as I hope to expand the audience internationally.  Already, this blog has most of its’ international traffic coming from the United States, with other countries including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Croatia, Ireland, and Luxembourg to name a few.  

It’s possible that some of the page views from the countries above are just bots, which are basically software that run automated tasks over the internet.  This would become more apparent when cross referencing with the amount of time spent on the page and the bounce rate.  Because I don’t know of anyone personally in Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Russia, I would assume that they aren’t actually real people reading my blog.  If you’re reading this and you are currently in Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Russia, let me know!

With the goal of eventually creating a stronger following and international audience, having a strong social media presence would be a huge asset.  Currently, Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram hold the podium for most popular social networking sites:

2018 Digital Media Report, page 68

“Let’s face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow of content across multiple media channels almost inevitable.”

Henry Jenkins, 2003

In his article Transmedia Storytelling, Jenkins (2003) highlights the importance of using a multitude of different social media platforms as opposed to restricting your content to just one.  The advantage here is not only more exposure, but also meeting your audience where they are.  With this is mind, I have created a Facebook page to share my blog posts.  Having a separate page for One More Klick that is independent from my personal page means traffic won’t be restricted by my own personal privacy settings.  Eventually, I will create an Instagram page which will feature different photographs linking them to their blog posts.  If it weren’t for social media, very few people would know about my blog and even fewer would be reading it. 

With blog posts being shared on social media, it was increasingly important for my blog to be responsive and mobile friendly. In Design Machines: How to survive in the digital Apocalypse, Travis Gertz (2015) criticizes the homogeneity of basic website designs. While I was trying to create a unique and customized aesthetic for my website, I ran into some serious challenged. While the desktop version worked perfectly, the layout didn’t translate well for mobile devices. As the majority of internet users access websites on their mobile devices, it was extremely important for my website to be responsive and mobile-friendly.

Social media allowed for networking and collaborations with other artists.  My first essay 21st Century Nudes covered the topic of censorship of artistic nudity on social media platforms. This essay was inspired by Vince Hemingson, a photographer, filmmaker, and bestselling author based out of Vancouver, who’s beautiful photographs routinely encounter censorship.  In wanting to share my essay on social media, I reached out to Vince for permission to tag him.  Not only did he agree and share my article with his network, he commended my work and asked for my feedback and comments on his Artist’s Statement for his Nude in the Landscape series.

Already, creating this blog has allowed me to build concrete skills by learning how to use WordPress and Google Analytics, along with broadening my artistic and professional network. This blog acts as a live document, changing and improving as I continue to learn and create. I plan on continuing this blog alongside my adventures, and hope that one day it might flourish into something larger.

References

Gertz, T. (2015). Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse. July 2015. Retrieved from https://louderthanten.com/articles/story/design-machines

Hemingson, V. n.d. Artist’s Statement: The Nude in the Landscape. n.d. Retrieved from http://hemingsonphotography.com/fine-art/nude-in-the-landscape/

Jenkins, H. (2003). Transmedia Storytelling. January 15 2003. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401760/transmedia-storytelling/

Kemp, S. (2018). We are social – Digital report 2018. Retrieved from https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/

Who Is Following Me?

After being rejected by GoogleAdsense (I am okay, I feel like it is because I have Adblock on so it will be something I need to fix in the future), I have been very interested in searching my own Google Analytics to view the audience I am reaching. 

Amanda pointed out that my blog has an aesthetic to it that posting a bunch of ads in places that are meant to be open would ruin the image I have created. I definitely am more of a sponsored post person where I would rather review or promote something through a post than have ads all over my blog. Anyways, that is besides the point.

I decided to look at my Google Analytics for the first time since beginning my Pub 101 journey and see who is following me.

The first piece of information that came up was this graph explaining my bounce rate, the amount of users that have visited my site in the last week, and how long people tend to spend on my site.

I have a pretty high bounce rate, ranking in at 36.36%. Ellen just explained that this is actually really good as it means people are clicking on my work and click off. Which sounds bad but it means I am getting views! They are single page clicks and lands on my browser.

I personally have only posted a select few articles on my Instagram. I do have a pretty reasonable following, so I don’t understand why I don’t just post articles. I have the link to my website in my bio and have received quite a few clicks from it.

The duration time is pretty high as well, but I feel it is just from my peer reviewers.

A majority of my viewers are from Canada and the United States which sounds right. Even 1 from Spain! I had one from Ireland once but I believe it was my friend who is studying abroad there right now.

People tend to be active on my account during mid day and later at night. That is sort of the theme here… late night posting.

My home page gets the post views and my most recent posting on Nostalgia has received quite a few clicks.

I find it interesting that most of my sessions come from a desktop computer (and have gone down.) I believe this can change once I start promoting my articles on social media.

This chart helps me see when my users return to my blog and how consistent they have been. It seems high on days I post but not on days I don’t. I could change this by uploading maybe 3 times a week periodically rather than 1-2?

It is wild to me that we can leave our digital footprints so easily and trace them back with no problem. I find it interesting how people can be use this data to stay in tune with how their websites or businesses are progressing.

I would say I have thrown in the towel with my footprints in regards to how I only look at things I need to or want to. I am very careful with the websites and areas of the internet that I use and search for. I would say this would be “throwing in the towel.”

Overall, it was interesting to search my analytics and see what I need to improve on.

I want to try posting more than 2 times a week and see where it takes me… so, stay tuned!

All Images provided by my personal Google Analytics account.

Featured Image Reference: @ZshulesZ  on weheartit.com

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Week 9

In last week’s lecture, we learnt about analytics, audiences and marketing. It was very interesting for me to see how the numbers in analytics translate into the audience online engagement to our website.

Looking at my blog’s google analytics, I notice that Monday and Tuesday seem to be the peak of traffic. And I think that definitely has something to do with the fact that our lecture is on Tuesday, and I tend to upload all my new posts on Monday night or Tuesday. The bounce rate of my blog is around 51%. People averagely spend around 5 min on my site. From what we learnt in lecture, the lower the bounce rate, the better. Because that means people are actually taking time reading my blog. That is definitely something I could improve on.

Another interesting thing that have come up in my analytics is where my audiences are located. Most of my audience are from United States, and the second most are from Canada. In the ranking of city, most of the visitor of my websites are from Vancouver, which is not surprising. But the second city in ranking is New York, which makes me quite happy since it is my favourite city in the whole world. I also get a few random users visiting from Spain, Belgium, Brazil, etc. It is exciting to think how someone across the world are visiting my blog. Another part of the demographic of my audience that has surprised me is the fact that there are more users are in the age of 25-34 than the ones in the age of 18-24. Since I fall in the category of 18-24, I’ve assumed that would be my audience’s demographic as well, but apparently it’s not the case.

I also notice that posiel.com of course is my main referral. But ever since I added my website address onto my own Instagram account bio, I’ve noticed an increase of incoming traffic from Instagram. In the future, I will definitely try and promote my blog posts on my social a bit more often, in order to drive up the traffic. I also get analytic report from my Instagram account since it is a business account. And it is very interesting to compare my website statistics with my Instagram’s.

In my opinion, these analytic statistics are so important because it helps us to understand our audience better, so that we could tailor the content better to our intended audience. But at the same time, it is quite a scary thing thinking about how  every step we take on the internet every second is recorded and analyzed by others.

The post Week 9 appeared first on Heyy, Jessie.

Nishita’s Blog

Nishita’s Blog
Here’s a little bit of me!

*The above image was taken from Nishita’s Blog.

A peer review on audience and channels

Nishita’s Blog is vibrant and eclectic gallery of multi-media art. The overall aesthetics are consistent, easy to navigate, and convey a style that seems to be very reflective of Nishita herself: on her about page Nishita shares her love of hip hop, which is ever-present in the style and colours for this blog. The pages themselves are purposely monochromatic: the dark background acts as the perfect wall, drawing all attention to the images of art. As Travis Gerts explains in his article Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse, “nothing makes a drop of colour brighter than when it’s set against a wall of grey”. Most of the images are vibrant, and bright pieces of art, contrasting well against the simple and dark theme. With this in mind, I find the title of her blog really hard to read against the busy background – changing the font colour from black to white, or even to the same red as the paper garland would allow for the title of the blog to pop, and become a lot more legible.

While navigating Nishita’s website, the first noticeable graphics were the large Instagram icons on the right, under the blog tab. There is a main instagram page that is private, as well as public art page While this is a wonderful way of building a following and audience, I would recommend linking your blog to your Instagram, which would allow for a stronger use of this cross-promotion. In addition, I would recommend making the main page public to allow for greater audience and reach – especially as it is labeled main, which leaves me to assume that traffic would be preferably diverted here as opposed to the accompanying art page. If this is not the case, I would remove the main link altogether. This seesaw between personal blog and art blog speaks to the multidisciplinary qualities of social media, and the undefined rules of online networks, which are “bringing change to all forms of information” (Kissane).

The mixed modes of art is really wonderful: this blog truly highlights Nishita’s talent and versatility. When it comes to videos, however, I could be cautious with the auto-play. For example, the blog tab automatically plays the last video at the bottom of the page – a vibrant alleyway filled with colourful street art and vendors. At first, its hard to say where the sound is coming: I check all my other tabs to see if there might be an add somewhere, or a video that popped up. We’ve all seen those people I class, in a café, or in a library, who interrupt the silence with an unexpected video, and panic trying to turn the sound off. Similarly, I often find myself browsing websites in a public space, and exit the website immediately as opposed to taking time to find the source of the sound. Keeping this in mind, especially if this blog is looking at retention, lower bounce rate, and overall keeping track of the analytics. If the auto-play function is something particularly desired, perhaps the blog could have a pop up muted video, like in Lonely Planet’s landing page, so the user immediately knows where the sound is coming from.  Similarly, having a preview of the post as opposed to the entire post would allow for reduced scrolling, and potentially more retention: the easier it is to find what you need, the better the experience for the user, which means a higher chance of returning to the blog.

These simple suggestions could help elevate the blog to the next level, creating a stronger sense of legitimacy, and foster a strong following. Overall, Nishita does a beautiful job of curating her website to best highlight her art. If you’re an art enthusiast, or an artist yourself, I recommend you check out her work here!