Tag Archives: Process Posts

Analytics and SEO: The Real Stuff

This week in PUB 101, we got to revisit Google Analytics. I installed this plugin for my blog in the first or second week of this course, but had yet to look at the data, so I was intrigued to see what kind of activity had been tracked on melatonin gone missing so I know what’s working and what could be improved in regards to my site’s SEO.

Google Analytics

The first thing I looked at, purely out of my own curiosity, is my audience overview. I wanted to see exactly how many people have checked out my blog.

From this graphic, I can see that melatonin gone missing has been visited by 151 new users and accumulated 640 total page views. Seeing this data and knowing that my blog has only existed for a few months is honestly quite amazing… I feel like a real website owner! The number of users on my site regularly fluctuate, and I could guess this is because I usually only post once a week, attracting the most traffic which then decreases until my next posts are up the following week.

I also was curious about user acquisition, because after all, this is only a blog for an SFU course… who’s finding it besides my TA, professor, and classmates? And how are they finding it?

User acquisition data from Google Analytics.

It’s interesting to see how users have come from social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, considering I have personally not linked my blog to either of those sites. The direct and google channels are probably mostly me, and the Posiel channel appears because my posts are connected to the Posiel feed, so these are unsurprising. Users have come from Jellylift as well, thanks to Antalya’s links in her peer review of melatonin gone missing (go check it out!).

Seeing that visitors really do come from social media and external links demonstrates how important a good and continuously improving SEO is for site traffic. Sam Hollingsworth explains this further, saying how having a good SEO is “the most viable and cost-effective way to both understand and reach customers in key moments that matter”. For melatonin gone missing, this means being accessible and easily usable for my target audiences, which I identify in my Imaginary Audiences post. I want my audience to find my blog in a pinch!

Growing my SEO

To improve my site’s SEO, as it is evidently quite important, I will aim to do things that Dr. Norman calls “ingredients for a good SEO”. Some of these things include effective use of keywords, including strong headers in your posts, and having outbound links to reliable sources. Although I strive to include all of these elements in my weekly posts, there are always ways to aim higher and ensure my SEO is being considered in every aspect of my blog design/content.

Stay tuned to see melatonin gone missing skyrocket in SEO success!

References:

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved April 10, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

Norman, N. (2023). Data and SEO [PowerPoint Slides]. Department of Publishing, Simon Fraser University.

Photo:

Joyce, J. (2021, February 20). 10 great google analytics alternatives. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved April 10, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-analytics-alternatives/347638/

Process Post #10

Process Post 10

This week, I wanted to once again, focus on my website from a user’s perspective. I mentioned in my 4th process post that I haven’t really been imagining an audience thus far, as I assumed no one else would be reading my content. I still think this way, however I have recently thought a little bit more about how I could gain an audience. Whether I decide to monetize my website in the future or not, I think it is very important to consider user experience when putting out content. Sam Hollingsworth states that “user experience has become every marketer’s number one priority” (Hollingsworth, 2021), and although I may not be marketing anything at the moment, I think it would be a good idea to start looking into increasing my website’s visibility.

One way of doing this is implementing social media withing my website. This is also something I recommended to my assigned peer in this weeks peer review, so I figured there’s no better way to work on my own website than taking my own advice. To do so, I added a link to follow my Instagram account at the end of my “about” page. I chose to link Instagram not only because it is one of the few social media apps that I have, but also because according to the State of Mobile 2022, Instagram is the top app likely used by Gen Z. If there is any audience I hope to increase engagement from, it would likely be Gen Z as my content aligns more with their preferences (as I, the writer of said content, am in fact also a part of Gen Z).

References:

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

State of Mobile 2022. data.ai. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://www.data.ai/en/go/state-of-mobile-2022/

Moving

Needless to say, moving is very tiring and in just two days I moved from this home into another. I’m not going to lie, I’ve changed my place many times since I came here, and it’s not because of me. Maybe it’s because the price in Vancouver is too high and my landlord is selling his house, so I had to plan to find a new place. I felt physically exhausted, and the time to write the post was delayed. But these difficulties do not deter me, life is an experience, after the experience I can get the qualification to grow. I look forward to each day.

keeping me company

This time without my dog’s company, I can’t lift my spirits for many things, as I recently moved, I sent him to my friend’s house, I still need to go back to China after April, so I can only entrust him to my friend, pets are healing for me, when I first came to Vancouver, I was scared and lonely inside, it didn’t take long for me to wish I had a small pet to spend these times with me. I hope that time will slow down so that it can be by my side for a long time. I had two pets before, both of them were dogs, and because I was very young at that time, I didn’t know how to take care of them, which caused me to get sick and leave this world. of. At the same time will also heal me a lot, when I am sad to be at home, it will silently lying next to me, like to give me comfort, I can understand that the dog’s life is short, since it chose me, I will also make it happy.

process post#10

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for collecting data from websites and applications to generate reports, and we all know that Google Analytics is a powerful tool for providing actionable data. One of the quickest ways to get this data is to clarify what all these terms mean. What does bounce rate mean, and does it correlate with exit rates? And how does it relate to sessions and page views? We first talked about impressions when looking at clicks. Display counts appear when links are placed in search results. According to Google’s SEO report, display counts do not include display counts for paid Google ad campaigns, which are recorded separately. In short, when a user can see your link in the search results, this is considered a display. As you know, we use the number of displays and the number of clicks to calculate the click-through rate.

While google analytics can see that I have about 20+ visitors to my site, I can also see my visitors and their ip addresses, and I can clearly see if they are using a computer or a cell phone to visit. I think this makes me feel uncomfortable. But analytics is an important display of data that users use for feedback, even though I don’t get emails and more feedback when I do.

process post#9

When we use our cell phones and computers, our data is already transparent, why did my parents always tell me when I was little not to expose my information on social media platforms, but we set up our own blogs and post our daily life and personal information in “About”, is this really a deliberate way to keep our data from being lost? Is this really a deliberate way to keep data from being lost? I don’t think so, just like I would use instagram, not to get more attention, just to know what my friends and my favorite celebrities are up to, I do think there are some people who over share on social platforms, exposing their privacy and orientation. But if you really don’t post anything, is it true that your information won’t be freely accessible? I don’t think so.

After reading “Digital breadcrumbs: the data trail we leave behind us…” by George Philip, Jennifer Anne Lazo, Rooham Jamali and Rudy Al Jaroodi, the data trail is really amazing, for example, if I am blogging at home with wifi connected, anyone who uses this company’s network knows where I am currently located.

Like I said earlier, I will not deliberately hide my data, because in these times, there are too many b don’t want to be found data are exposed to the public, no matter what we do, go to buy a thing at the same time, let you join the membership will get a discount, I think I will go to do so, after all, I will not lose anything, just published my email, cell phone number, and home address, they also In this way to send emails to consumers to let them know some of their developments, are getting information data from both sides.

Overall, I think it’s normal to go ahead and publish appropriately while ensuring your y privacy. Nowadays, it’s very easy to find out your information, and also to raise the heart of vigilance on social media, while gaining benefits.

Process Post #10

Organic Search Traffic

This week’s reading on 15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO makes me reflect on how challenging it is to have your website appear in searches. The article’s first point is titled “Organic Search is Most Often the Primary Source of Website Traffic” (Hollingsworth, 2021). However, how often does my website appear in an organic search?

Looking at my Google Site Kit, it appears that the Search feature is not doing much for my website. The only search query that led someone to my site was when “vanessa planet” was searched. I am guessing that this search was made by someone in this publishing class, most likely the student who was writing my peer review, as this is a really specific search. This shows that I must change my publishing strategy to show up in more search queries.

I do not mind if my site has no audience. I am mainly creating this blog for myself; however, I think it would be cool to have an audience, as it will allow individuals with similar interests as me to connect with my website. I will change my posting strategy by adding more keywords and tags to my post in the hopes of attracting an audience.

Reference

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 6). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo. Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

Analytics Part 2: Taking a Closer Look

This week, we learned all about how to optimize our blogs for every website’s best friend and greatest enemy: Google. So I decided to look closer at Spilling the Royaltea’s analytics to see who is visiting my site. Then, I did the same to my search engine optimization or SEO to try to figure out how to grow my audience and rank higher on Google searches. (For an explanation of the random underlines, read further):

Diving into Analytics

This week, I did a deep dive into Google Analytics for my website, and looked at who’s been looking at Spilling the Royaltea. Here’s what I found in terms of website traffic:

Screenshot of Google Analytics for Spilling the Royaltea (all relevant information is stated in the text of the blog)

Since Spilling the Royaltea’s inception, there have been exactly 100 new users and 745 page views! The number of users has stayed pretty consistent over time, with the occasional peak of 5 users a day. While it’s good to know that I haven’t been losing viewers, it would be nice to see this increase sometime soon. Hopefully, by improving my SEO in the coming weeks, I’ll see an improvement shortly.

Unfortunately, since I just recently enabled the option to view demographics, I am unable to see data on this section of my website analytics. Seeing my audience’s demographics would be extremely useful when ensuring I’m catering my data to the right people. For example, I am currently assuming that my audience consists mostly of young people, so I’m using quite a bit of Gen Z jargon in my content posts. But if mostly older people are looking at my blog, I’d have a little bit of a problem, since they might not understand the nuances of the language I’m using. When this part of Google Analytics updates, I’ll be sure to use it to help decide my content.

Implementing Effective SEO

Hollingsworth really drives home the importance of implementing SEO in businesses (and I guess Spilling the Royaltea could be considered one?) to help increase visitors to websites. For example, it builds trust and credibility. By creating an accessible, effective user experience that can be easily found on Google, people feel more comfortable going to my site for information. I’ll also get a larger audience by building this sense of trust and credibility. It even helps me with my knowledge of the web because I need to stay updated about who’s doing what to improve their SEO.

And in this week’s lecture, we learned exactly how we might go about improving our SEO, so I tried out a few of these tactics this week. Firstly, we learned about implementing effective keywords. These keywords are what searchers enter into Google, so I need to make sure I’m implementing enough of these to improve my ranking on Google searches. So for this process post, with the help of ChatGPT, I entered the prompt: Generate keywords for a blog post related to analytics and SEO, and here’s what it gave me:

Screenshot of keywords for my blog post about analytics and SEO generated by ChatGPT

And while I couldn’t include every single one of these keywords in my posts, I tried my best to organically include as many as I could (or slightly varied versions of them), the first occurrence of which I underlined throughout my post.

We also learned about including strategic headers. Although I thought I was already doing this pretty well, I learned about a few things I could do to further improve. For example, I should be using actionable headers, which I did for this post: I included the verbs “dive,” “implement,” and “create” to add some dimension and interest. I also included keywords in my headers, like “analytics” and “SEO.”

The final thing I want to do is work on the branding of my site. So far, although my website is consistent in its theme, nothing in terms of branding really makes it stand out and become memorable for visitors. I think that part of creating this “memorability” is making a logo. Coming soon…

Creating my Digital Garden?

But what about creating a digital garden just for me? In my previous process post about analytics, I spoke of maintaining my site as a digital garden instead of monetizing it and trying to grow my audience. Because of this, I concluded that I wouldn’t worry too much about gaining readers, just because I wanted to make it a space for just me and my own thoughts.

However, after learning about analytics and SEO this week, I realized that I’m already doing a bunch of the things I need to do to increase my audience like summarizing my article in the subheaders and writing high quality information. And after all, I realized that making a few improvements to potentially invite more people into my blog requires a few simple changes that don’t take away from the intimacy of my blog like I previously feared. So at the end of the day, having a big audience to share my interests with sounds like a pretty great thing to me.

References:

Basu, T. (2020, September 5). Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/

Hollingsworth, S. (2018, April 13). 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs SEO. Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

Normann, S. (2023, March 21). Data and SEO [PowerPoint slides]. POSIEL. https://posiel.com/lecture-files/

Wong, O. (2023, March 19). Digital footprints, analytics, and monetization. Spilling the Royaltea. http://spilling-the-royaltea.com/process-posts/digital-footprints-analytics-and-monetization/

Photo:

The Fridge Agency. (n.d.). [SEO] [Stock Illustration]. https://thefridgeagency.com/blog/understanding-power-seo/

Peer Review #3

For the third and final peer review of the semester, I was assigned to review Roland’s website; however, due to Roland’s website being incomplete as well as lacking content, I randomized another person and am now going to peer review Emerson’s website. This was finalized on Saturday, March 25, 2023, anything posted after this date were not included.

Roland’s website: http://gallifreyanbro.com/

Emerson’s website: https://dripowensonline.net/

At first glance, Emerson’s website can be seen as a dark hole, a bit bland with nothing behind the surface, but then you would be quite wrong. The first thing I checked out was the “About” tab on the menu, it was only then was I able to understand what I was getting into. Emerson’s creative take on creating your website was shown, and I started to believe that I was able to get away from it all with dripowensonline.

Emerson’s audience is himself, and he doesn’t sugarcoat it. He states it in “Process Post #5”, “I don’t expect others to find it”. Rather than trying to state that their audience is whoever comes upon it, Emerson admits that they are writing to themselves and does not need to adapt to anyone’s comfort levels as it all depends on what he believes is true. Since his website audience is so small, relative to who Emerson lets into his digital garden, it allows it to be comfortable and welcoming. The minimalistic-ness of the “Home” page allows for a personal aroma for the user and reader.

I like to take a look at what other people are doing in class. I check out the google sheets page with all the websites and inquire what people are writing about or posting. Having looked at Emerson’s website I can say that I haven’t seen anything like it. In the recommended reading “How to Survive the Digital Apocalypse” by Travis Gertz, he talks about copycat culture and how companies are looking at the most successful websites and copying what they are doing. “When another company achieves success, there’s a lot of pressure to investigate what they did right and apply that to our own organizations” (Gertz, 2015). Looking at all the different websites in the class, I can say without a doubt, I haven’t seen something like Emerson’s. As I mentioned previously, his audience is himself, and because of that, he doesn’t need to copy others because he doesn’t have the same audience.

As a reader, of course, my perspective on Emerson’s website is going to be different than his perspective or even someone else’s. Because of this, it’s hard to say what I would think needs changing on his website. I am not his intended audience so of course, I am going to think of things differently than he would or he would want to. I would say, if it was my website, I would change the titles of my process posts. I like to make my posts engaging, even if it’s just for myself, so possibly changing the titles of your process posts could make your website just a little more interesting.

Altogether, I enjoyed Emerson’s website immensely and look forward to seeing more interesting and creative photos in his “Archive”.

References:

Gertz, T. (2015, July 10). How to Survive the Digital Apocalypse. Louder Than Ten. https://louderthanten.com/coax/design-machines

Peer Review #3

Today I’ll be reviewing Nicole’s website, https://tmylife.ca/! It’s a personal blog about exploring and trying new things. Her tagline is “Shake up your routine and explore, ” which sums up her website well. She wishes to break a monotonous routine and share new ideas with her readers. I love how she tells her story before approaching the blog’s purpose because it provides context and a personable tone to her writing.

She uses a content marketing strategy to appeal to viewers, through personal storytelling. It’s written from the perspective of someone who wants to change something about her life, and the journey of her doing such.

She has different categories for her blog, using a submenu to highlight different topics such as ‘My Explore’, ‘A Day in a Life’, and ‘T Time’. This is a strategic way to organize her website content and allow viewers to read different topics based on what they are drawn to. This is also an excellent way to keep users on the site for longer, improving her Google Analytics.

Looking deeper into her blogs, her branding is fairly consistent across the board, naming her blogs ‘Plogs’. This is a unique way to draw viewers in, though I’d love to know what inspired ‘Plogs’. She is authentic and honest about her life, even in her most recent post, detailing how busy she was and how she was unable to go to different places.

In addition, I think it would be beneficial to only include a few recent blog posts on her home page, rather than all of them, as the homepage looks a bit busy, and users may feel overwhelmed.

In terms of business strategy, she utilizes her social media as a strategy to get viewers to read her site. Her social media is consistent and engaging, which I love. I would recommend she add links to the images on her website, to link to her Instagram posts. I notice she has a Pinterest as well, which contributes to the aesthetics of her website. I would recommend she consider other social media channels such as TikTok or Twitter. She could also make Day in the Life vlogs to include in her blog posts. To invite leads or more viewers, I would include a contact page of some sort, and use that as a call-to-action in her posts. She has a subscribe box at the bottom of her page, but it is hard to see, so I would try to make that more visible somehow, by including it earlier on the home page.

All in all, the consistency of her branding is compelling, and I would personally read her blog posts and view her website. I can tell she pays attention to the design and content and ensures they are synonymous with each other. Check out her website!

Links

https://www.semrush.com/blog/beginners-definitive-guide-to-google-analytics/?kw=&cmp=CA_SRCH_DSA_Blog_Core_BU_EN&label=dsa_pagefeed&Network=g&Device=c&utm_content=515715597285&kwid=aud-298874018863:dsa-1053501810467&cmpid=11775480152&agpid=117404321274&BU=Core&extid=203772850290&adpos=&gclid=CjwKCAiAl-6PBhBCEiwAc2GOVBXLzVgokvAKi3dhv0ZwzfsykIeUcfznae5KWx-dvLb6DjSm3FLsHRoCOfgQAvD_BwE

https://www.boxcarmarketing.com/storytelling-for-business-do-you-have-a-story-to-tell/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing

The 5 C’s of Effective Content Marketing

The post Peer Review #3 first appeared on Lifting With Lita.

Process Post: How Do I Want to Do Things?

When I opened the “State of Mobile” reading by data.ai I actually laughed as I went to the eleventh page and looked at the “Average Age Group Index Among Top Apps Per Category”. For Gen Z is said the typical apps, apps that I use like Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify, although I was surprised that Tik Tok wasn’t on there. For Millennials it had said WhatsApp Messenger, which I thought was funny because I am on a family groupchat with a bunch of cousins as well as aunts and uncles on WhatsApp and I would say the average age on the group chat falls into the Millennial age category. And than last, but not least, where I laughed out loud was for Gen X and baby boomers where it had in fourth place, Stocard. I laughed because when I am currently writing this, Thursday March 23, my mom had JUST texted our “Jackson 4” groupchat to add her Chipotle card to our Stocard app.

That little starter may not be relatable, but for me it was quite funny. ANYWAY, while starting my website, as I had mentioned in previous posts, I never thought I would actually be writing to an audience. I thought the only ones who would read my posts would be myself time and time again, but then also those who were reviewing my blog as well as whoever was marking it. Little did I know, when I post on Instagram, people actually look at what I post or share. Now, I get an average of 43 people viewing my blog postings when I share a story on Instagram promoting it.

For my audience and my goal as a blog content creator (weird to say that after writing consistently for 2 months), I never really aimed to have my blog show up on others search pages. Sure I could include keywords for people to view my posts, but personally, my blog wasn’t meant for that. My blog was never meant to be a profit maximizing website to capitalize off of the hungry, but rather a way for me to just write about what I like. I have to admit, I hate writing about topics that I’m not interested in, and I have had teachers tell me “Tara, when you like something and are actually interested about the topic, your writing drastically improves”. So when writing this blog feels like a chore, or a job, than I might start to write more dry.

If I just focus on the reasons ten and eleven in Sam Hollingsworth’s article “15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO”, which are 10. SEO is PR and 11. It’s a Long-Term Strategy. I believe all Sam’s points are valid and make sense, but his points concerning my website do not coincide. For example, both his tenth and eleventh points relate to the longevity of the website, but for me, I don’t plan on writing posts consistently for the rest of my life or even past this course. Once the course is done, as fun as it has been, I don’t plan on keeping my website going as I have other things in my life I have to deal with and other courses to work on. Anyway, all in all, I have to decide what I want to do and want to complete in the remaining part of this class.

References:

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 6). 15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO. Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

Artificial Intelligence

AI is on a rapid rise in education. Professors and educators have been banning new softwares like ChatGPT and Dall-E with the fear that students will use them to plagiarize entire assignments and diminish critical thinking. However, the use of these technologies is inevitable and increasing in various everyday circumstances. As educational institutions continue banning them, they will just get more and more advanced, which means that at some point, we’ll all have to cope with them somehow. So this week, I tried out two of these technologies: ChatGPT and Dall-E, and found a few ways students might positively use it in the classroom.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI software developed by OpenAI that is meant to generate almost-immediate, conversational responses to questions, prompts, and commands. It launched to the public in November 2022, and since then has been a topic of discourse in academia, ethics and technology, and general interest of the common person with free time and internet connection. Its impressive technology allows the responses to be detailed, articulate, and generally factually correct. User input also helps craft desired outputs, as the AI can “learn” and tailor its responses to reflect feedback and critiques. As mentioned, ChatGPT has faced rejection from educators and institutions with its negative implications for students, but there are ways that ChatGPT can be effectively implemented to aid learning and expression.

Idea Generation

Writer’s block is pretty inevitable for any class, especially PUB 101, where I write two or three posts a week. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can generate ideas to take inspiration from for essays, assignments, and blog posts. This could yield excellent results, as each student would be able to spend more time on the execution of their project, rather than spending time brainstorming ideas that are often too simple to accurately and rigorously demonstrate their learning. To bypass the possible concern that this would limit creative thinking and be a case of plagiarism, I must clarify that in fleshing out projects from a mere concept to execution still requires a lot of creative thinking, and by referencing the software’s assistance it would steer clear of plagiarism claims since the ideas would in a sense still be the student’s own based on the prompt and information fed.

Keyword Generation

In PUB 101, I’ve learned that inputting keywords in posts is extremely important. They help improve the SEO and my website’s reach. ChatGPT could effectively help generate some of these keywords to benefit each post on my blog. So, I decided to type the following into ChatGPT: what are some keywords to include in a blog post about reviewing Taylor Swift’s album “folklore”? Here’s what it generated.

A ChatGPT response to the prompt "what are some keywords to include in a blog post about reviewing Taylor Swift’s album “folklore”?"

What is Dall-E?

Dall-E is an AI software, also developed by OpenAI, that generates complex creative images from text prompts. Prompts can include things like recreating individual artists’ styles, using various art mediums, and ultimately absurd visuals that one would not expect to see in one image. Like ChatGPT, the use of Dall-E has been a controversial topic. Specifically, when is it ethically permissible to use it, especially in academic contexts?

Creating Visual Interest

My content posts often use a lot of images from the internet. While this is useful in many cases, especially for posts that take on a more editorial-style, I think that adding pictures created from DALL-E could enhance the personalization of my posts. It could make the blog reflect me and my own personality instead of always relying on other people’s pictures and using generic-looking stock photos. For example, my post about crocheting could have included Dall-E pictures to create added entertainment, visual interest, and personality.

Oil painting of girl crocheting. — Dall-E generated image using the prompt “an oil painting of a girl learning how to crochet”.

Citing and Copyright?

Since ChatGPT is such a novel tool, traditional citation styles have yet to cohesively come up with solutions for ways students should properly credit the use of the technology in their work. However, as a student and a blog-owner, citing your sources is a critical step in ethical academia and success. Suggestions have been made for citation style from APA, for example, an online library guide for a university suggests, “This technology is new and we are all learning about generative AI resources and how to ethically use them. Consider making the ChatGPT conversation retrievable by including the text as an appendix or as online supplemental material.”

But then again, would we even need to credit the model if it’s not really taking from other people’s ideas? If things are written by ChatGPT, who owns the copyright? The human who generated the prompt, or the creators of the model? Only time will tell.

References:

Antonelli, W. (n.d.). How to use dall·e 2 and Craiyon, the AI art tools that can generate images from any text prompt. Business Insider. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/dall-e-mini

Dall·E: Creating images from text. DALL·E: Creating images from text. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://openai.com/research/dall-e

Introducing chatgpt. Introducing ChatGPT. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

Johnson, A. (2023, January 31). Chatgpt in schools: Here’s where it’s banned-and how it could potentially help students. Forbes. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/01/18/chatgpt-in-schools-heres-where-its-banned-and-how-it-could-potentially-help-students/?sh=130da4506e2c

Research guides: APA style 7th edition: Chatgpt & ai tools. Humber. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://guelphhumber.libguides.com/c.php?g=716556&p=5279441

process post#8

In recent years there has been news of copyright plagiarism, so what is copyright and under what circumstances can you be sued? What is the content they publish? Who actually copied who? What is my copyright? Faced with some of these questions, I can’t get answers.、

My friend is a nail artist, and she always puts her own watermark, only her own watermark, on her finished artwork pictures, and she told me that this way she won’t be saved by her peers to post on her own platform. For example, every time I upload a picture on my blog, a picture of my dog or my life, a picture of a landscape, wouldn’t I have to put a watermark on every time? No, I think that’s too much trouble, I just want to show my life among my blog. Now there are a lot of impersonating a person to create another platform account, I don’t know what the point is, money or what? So would it be useful to sue in this case, just to be on a social networking site and steal someone else’s photos to post on your own social account.

This week I’m reading“You Say ‘Tomaydo’, I say no copyright infringement: Recipe book not an original compilation” by Peter Henein, The defendant take-out catering business recipes, in this case, signed an agreement attributed to the original recipe and a copy of the original.The text states that “a compilation is entitled to copyright protection when the selection and arrangement of the compilation is made in an original manner. However, copyright protection is limited to the original part of the editorial; it does not protect the underlying non-original elements. I have a different point of view. In the case of protecting one’s copyright, if it is limited to the editor’s original part only, then if it is a combination of both original content and non-original content, it will not be treated as plagiarism? To what extent does the law allow certain things to change in the face of litigation?

Process Post #9 – Analytics

Analytics are an aspect of website design that I see mentioned quite often, with videos and articles discussing how to best utilize the information you can get from built-in metrics and website additions such as Google Analytics.

In the artist world, you would only need to focus on analytics if you’re trying to find freelance work or an industry job in the field. Since I make art as a hobby, I have little use in analyzing the pieces I post (especially since they’re made for fun 90% of the time).

In the past, I have lost motivation and passion for art because I was constantly checking my engagement rates, optimal timing, and post formatting. Although I don’t resent the art I’ve made purely to appeal to trends and popular media, I find that it doesn’t genuinely represent me and my style. My personal art journey has also been stunted from such attempts for engagement, since I try not to add anything experimental or “weird” in order to appear more palatable.

Because of these reasons, I choose to ignore analytics on social media and focus on engaging with my friends, creating art that is true to myself, and relying on the miraculous and constantly shifting nature of the algorithms and individuals to decide how each post fares.

When discussing this website, I have a much more impersonal view of the content I create. I am less confident in my writing, and analyzing works will always be more stressful to make public than something like art which can be interpreted in infinitely many ways.

On the rare occasion that I do check my analytics, I’m mostly looking for information about the people who use my website and whether I’m meeting their needs well enough. For example, I found that 89.4% of my user base views my website on desktop which helps me prioritize which elements to update or fix. I also enjoy seeing which posts people visit my site for; there are a surprising number of users who choose to view my classwork instead of the blog content itself.

I enjoy browsing different user reports and seeing if there’s any visitors who come back to the blog often (35.7% currently). Interestingly, a majority of my audience finds my website through organic searching, which suggests a user base outside of just my fellow classmates. My overall bounce rate is 52.63% which I hope will stay in that range for the rest of this term.

I keep a filter on known bots and spiders, but there’s always a gnawing feeling in the back of my head that much of these analytics are taken up by non-human users. Despite this, I still find it fun to peruse the different tabs and wonder why each person has chosen to stop by my site.

I am usually on my computer into the late hours of the night, which has always been reflected in when I post my art. Surprisingly, that trait has carried over into the content of this website, with many posts being completed after 9pm. While posting late would typically be considered a bad practice (afternoons are usually more preferable), many people happen to visit my blog in the evening. This could also be due to different time zones (where it would be earlier in the day for the rest of North America), but there are very few users reading outside of the lower mainland.

As a whole, analytics are a valuable source of user feedback, especially if you don’t receive more obvious sources like comments or emails like me.

☆.

PROCESS POST #10: Insights and Rankings, SEO

From last week’s process post discussing analytics, this week’s readings proposed a visual of Data.ai. The content used analytic reports to show which apps and websites are frequently used/downloaded. It is a useful tool that helps navigate businesses and users to improve their projects and increase engagement. It is ideal for decision-making processes and delivers overall insight into the performance of the gaming market for instance (Data.ai., 2022).

The reading even acknowledges the age of technology we’re in. Linking to my last process post, technology has evolved into a new age and is advancing as we speak, it has brought Gen Z to what it is today (Data.ai., 2022). With Gen Z, comes new trending sites and apps. Data.ai. has reported that TikTok has ranked “Top Apps” in the 2021 market.

As a social media user, I agree with this report. TikTok has grown a huge community of creators and overall is an entertaining app. I think that TikTok has become very successful because it offers short collections of entertaining content that keep the audience engaged and active since videos are around 15-30 seconds. Compared to an hour-long youtube video, TikTok has an advantage as it caters to short attention spans. I do find myself scrolling for hours in my free time which is probably me contributing to levelling up TikTok’s ranking.

Speaking of technology, SEO is introduced as “Search Engine Optimization.” The Search Engine Journal states that SEO is the most viable and cost-effective tool to understand and reach customers (Hollingsworth, 2021). The article elaborates on reasons why SEO is crucial for businesses. From this reading, 2 reasons stood out to me the most. 1: Organic search is often the primary source of website traffic (Hollingsworth, 2021). This is a true statement, considering where we all start online is with a browser, an organic search engine. 2: SEO is a strategy used for the long term (Hollingsworth, 2021). This is a factor to consider because technology and the internet have impacted society, and are constantly changing.

I’ve known about search engines beforehand since it is a daily tool I use, although this is my first time digging deeper into the topic and hearing about SEO.

– Eliza (aka Peanut)

Reference:

data.ai. 2022. State of Mobile 2022

Hollingsworth, S. (2021, August 9). 15 reasons why your business absolutely needs SEO. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved March 21, 2023, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

Process Post 9

After reading ‘Digital Breadcrumbs‘ by George Philip, Jennifer Anne Lazo, Rooham Jamali and Rudy Al Jaroodi, I started to think a lot about how technology is tracking me everyday. I was fully aware that this happens to users of technology as most apps require location tracking, however I am curious as to what they do with this information. Is this type of surveillance really as scary as everyone makes it out to be? As the authors of Digital Breadcrumbs say: “will this trail of data we leave benefit or harm us in the long run?” (Philip et al., 2016). This article made me think of an assignment I did a few months ago where we were to visit My Ad Center on our google accounts and and click “manage privacy”. This feature allows users to see all the assumptions that google has made about them to in order to provide appropriate ads that users will engage with. In my case, google correctly guessed my age, gender, household income, education status and even my relationship status all based on the info I have shared online by just using technology.

Although this information can be somewhat alarming as for anyone it is odd to find out that you have been watched and tracked this whole time. However, this data is used as information to educate, and also to create personalized ads for its user. Therefore, I am not to worried about minimizing my own digital footprint as I don’t find it to be as much of a threat as people can make it out to be. Besides, new technologies like this are inevitable and will only improve as time goes on. Think about it as a tool for out future rather than something to be afraid of.

References

Philip, G., Lazo, J., Jamali, R., & Jaroodi, R. (n.d.). Digital Breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us. Pod Academy. Retrieved March 21, 2023, from http://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/

Process Post #9

Process Post: Breadcrumbs 🥖

My parents always get mad at me whenever I try to argue with them about social media platforms. Of course, I do believe that social media is taking away the mystery of our generation compared to others, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. My dad is always saying that I am giving away my data and that the big companies are going to know whatever about me, but my response is always “so what”. How bad is it if they know I like to watch videos about murder mysteries, or what TV shows I like to watch. Is it really the end of the world, no, it’s not. Sure, I do think that some people overshare on social media and that maybe they shouldn’t tell everyone where they are exactly at every minute of every day, but posting once in a while with your friends or if you go out for coffee really isn’t that bad.

After reading the introduction of “Digital breadcrumbs: the data trail we leave behind us…” by George Philip, Jennifer Anne Lazo, Rooham Jamali and Rudy Al Jaroodi, I was astounded to realize that my trail is long. REAL long. Even right now, I’m at work and using the mall wifi to use my computer typing on google docs. Anyone who can track that type of stuff, knows I’m at the mall right now using google.

Personally, as I mentioned before, I don’t really care that much about my data trail. Sure, it’s a long one, but overall, the people that get our data are going to get it at some time at some point. Whatever you do, if you search up a store on google, ads are going to pop up for that store the next time you look at something, they are always collecting information and I can’t think of a reason why its bad. If you have self-control and a little awareness about what is going on, they really can’t get to you on their data mining techniques.

When they mentioned CCTV cameras in the article/podcast, I was interested to learn the different opinions of some people regarding them. Some thought it was unnecessary while others thought about the safety it provides. Things like these are what I mean when I say that we aren’t going to be able to stop how far the digital age takes our data trail. Sure we can regulate some things, like how the UK has a data protection law, but there are always going to be backdoors or other ways to get information that we won’t be able to control. Overall, I think as a generation and a population, we need to increase our awareness about social media and the information they can take but think about the benefits this may allow as well.

Process Post #9

Hello everyone! This week I’ve been busy trying to improve my website by analyzing its performance and figuring out new ideas that could help make it even better.

In this lecture, I was fortunate enough to attend a talk given by Trevor Battye from Clevers Media, who shared his insights on monetization and ways to make money from your audience. He stressed that it’s important to identify the needs of your audience and to be unique in your niche when starting a business. One key takeaway for me was that your first business might not be the most profitable one, but it’s a valuable learning experience that can set you up for success in future endeavours.

Trevor also mentioned that starting a business when you’re young can be advantageous because you tend to be more determined and willing to take risks, and people are more compassionate and are generally more forgiving of mistakes. I found this encouraging, as I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, and that’s held me back from starting my own business or even just creating my own public social media pag e. But As a part of Rojan’s Road to Roj transformation journey, I recently shifted my mindset and focused on continuous improvement.

One thing that really resonated with me was Trevor’s experiences with selling candles. As someone who wants to get a publishing minor, I’m eager to learn more about these kinds of experiences in this field by taking the PUB 456. Overall, it was an inspiring and informative talk that left me feeling motivated to keep pushing forward with my own projects.

As a content creator for my blog, I’ve become increasingly aware of the digital breadcrumbs I leave behind daily, from checking the weather on my phone in the morning to using my contactless card to buy coffee, various apps and technologies record and track every action I take.

But what does this mean for my readers and me? Who has access to this information, and how can it be used? These are essential questions to consider as we navigate the world of big data.

According to Dr. Elisa Oreglia, a lecturer in Global Digital Cultures, a digital trail is a trace that we leave behind through technology. This can include our location information, app usage, and internet searches.

But where does all this information go? Dr. Oreglia in “Digital breadcrumbs” explains that it’s stored in various places, from our mobile phone network to GPS satellites and data centers scattered worldwide. And while there are laws and processes in place to protect our digital privacy, it’s essential to be aware of what data we’re sharing and who we’re sharing it with. For example, when I search for my name on Google, I still see some very old profile pictures. Although I don’t want them to be public anymore, I cannot delete them because I can no longer access those accounts.

I believe I am responsible for informing my readers about the digital breadcrumbs they may be leaving behind, especially in this digital age where companies like Amazon are trying their best to make every action digital and collect every single piece of data from users.

Also, Suzanne Norman’s experience in “Trying not to drop breadcrumbs in Amazon’s store” when visiting Amazon’s first physical store was mind-provoking, as she could not purchase a physical book with cash, which is scary for me as a reader as well. By sharing this information, we can all become more mindful of our digital footprint and take steps to protect our privacy online. So, the next time you check your phone or purchase with your card, remember that your actions leave a trail of data behind you. Stay informed and stay mindful.

Besides, this week I made some changes to my design website based on the peer reviews I have received. I was glad that both of my peers were engaged with the overall design decisions, the flow of my content, and the consistency of my website for my audience. Both mentioned that my logo might not represent the intention behind my overall blog content and the other homepage elements. At that time, I had not yet posted my content about the transformative miracle of meditation and yoga on my journey and the following posts on topics such as my “ACL surgery” and “bypassing materialism“, which these practices have had a huge impact on my life, bringing me a new sense of balance and helping me to form this new perspective.

On this blog, by sharing the stories of each step of my transformation journey, I want to show the balance I have gradually gained through all these stages, wether in physical, mental or social stage. Thus, the Lotus pose is a powerful symbol of the balance between mind, body, and spirit (Luthra, 2021) and this is the reason I chose it as my logo

Also, to make my header image more balanced with the overall homepage aesthetics, I updated the images of the featured homepage slider. I made it consistent with my header image. As Cass mentioned in her peer review # 2 I also added more pictures to my content posts and process posts to make them more engaging. I also shortened my paragraphs, as Ashley mentioned in her peer review #1, while reducing the white space in each post. I am grateful for the constructive peer reviews I have received so far.

Bibliography:

Affeldt, C. (2023, March 9). Peer Review Number Two. Completely Cass. http://completelycass.com/personalblog/peer-review-number-two/

Chia, A. (2023, February 7). Peer Review #1: Exploring Rojan’s Road to Roj. Two AM Thoughts. http://twoamthoughts.com/posiel/peer-review-1-exploring-rojans-road-to-roj/

Luthra, A. (2021, October 30). Padmasana Benefits. Be Body Wise. https://bebodywise.com/blog/padmasana-benefits/

Norman, S. (2016, March 7). Trying not to drop breadcrumbs in Amazon’s store. Publishing | Graduate and Undergraduate Studies – Simon Fraser University. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.sfu.ca/publishing/news/editorials/trying-not-to-drop-breadcrumbs-in-amazon-s-store.html

Pod Academy. (2015, September 28). Digital Breadcrumbs: Our Data Trail. https://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/

Digital Footprints, Analytics, and Monetization

Digital footprints, digital trails, and digital breadcrumbs – the data trails we leave behind us when we use technology are something many of us have been warned about our whole lives.

I Know A Lot About This

Like my previous post on digital literacy, I’ve learned quite a bit about digital footprints, especially as a Communication major. In one of my classes, I even produced a 10-minute documentary on the effects of digital footprints on future employment opportunities. But in that documentary, I emphasized individual actions and the implications of “cancel culture,” and how to mitigate the impacts of digital footprints on young people’s futures.

But on Pod Academy’s podcast, they explain that digital footprints don’t just encompass people’s individual actions and choices made on the internet. A lot of information is spread unintentionally when using any sort of technology with a chip in it. For example, when I use my phone, it’s constantly communicating with cell towers and the internet too. That means that my phone’s always giving apps information about me and my environment.

And as an avid technology user, this is a little worrisome. I don’t exactly want my phone tracking me and giving all these apps tons of information at all times. But also, I’ve sort of gotten to a point where I don’t care. Like many others expressed on Pod Academy, the creation of our digital trails has been so ubiquitous that people simply don’t worry about it anymore.

Google Analytics

The information collected from our digital trails or footprints is often used to improve outreach and grow audiences. For example, for my own blog, I installed Google Analytics, which allows me to track people’s browsing habits on my website.

As of March 18, 2023, within the past 28 days, I’ve had 35 users visit my site. I can also see information about my most popular pages and top content, and how visitors experience my site such as how long pages take to load (which 9.4s, considered poor… oops). This information should help me build an audience and engage them effectively. However, to be completely honest, although I have been checking my Google Analytics from time to time out of curiosity, I haven’t been using it to help improve my site for my audience.

Screenshot of "traffic" for Google Analytics on Spilling the Royaltea, showing that there have 35 users in the past 28 days. — The “traffic” section in Google Analytics for Spilling the Royaltea

I think that a big reason why I haven’t been doing so is because my site is turning out to be more like a digital garden than a blog. Digital gardens, according to Basu, are spaces that do not focus on growing audiences and having huge viewerships. Instead, they focus on personal growth, which is exactly what Spilling the Royaltea has been about. As my blog has developed, although I do have a target audience in mind, I’m not too worried about growing my audience, getting famous and rich, or any of that kind of stuff.

For now, I’m using my analytics simply as a way to satisfy my curiosity about who’s looking at my blog. I’m really enjoying my blogging process and especially like the lack of pressure to gain huge audiences, so I think that’s what I’ll be doing for the time being.

To Monetize or Not To Monetize?

So, all of this leads to the question of whether I should monetize my site. With the whole concept of digital gardens in mind and the idea of creating a space for me and my thoughts, I don’t foresee monetizing Spilling the Royaltea anytime in the near future.

Based on my own experience with monetized sites, I felt like ads make websites feel distant, incohesive, or even disturbing, since many of the ads from Google Adsense are often inappropriate. I want my blog to be as inviting and welcoming to users as possible and I want it to retain its intimate, personal feel. I don’t want users to believe I’m “using them” by exploiting their information and digital trails to extract money from them. With my own apprehensions about advertising and data collection in mind, I don’t want to create a space where others feel the same kinds of fears.

I also want my blog to reflect me and my thoughts only and with a third party who imposes their ads or has input on what kinds of content I post, it takes away from the intimacy of my blog. For me, the content I post is what matters, and I want users to focus on this too.

So although Spilling the Royaltea is simply a passion project (…or a school project) without any financial gain, I’m very satisfied with how the experience has been so far. It’s the joy of blogging that matters, not how much money I can get from it.

References:

Pod Academy. (2016, May 3). Digital breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us. http://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/

Wong, O. (2023, March 14). All About Digital Literacy. Spilling the Royaltea. http://spilling-the-royaltea.com/process-posts/all-about-digital-literacy/

Photo:

Lean Plum. (2019). [Monetization] [Stock Illustration]. https://www.leanplum.com/blog/free-app-monetization-methods/

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from "PUB 101: Publication of Self in Everyday Life"

Tag Archives: Process Posts

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Reference

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Process Post #9 – Analytics

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Process Post: Breadcrumbs 🥖

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Digital Footprints, Analytics, and Monetization