Tag Archives: pub 101

PROCESS POST: Community guidelines (week 12)

Street Stories’ Community Guidelines

Street Stories is a place where the stories of vulnerable people living in Surrey and people involved with NightShift can be shared. In consideration of this, I will not tolerate any comments that are not respectful towards NightShift and those that they serve. Disrespectful comments that contain racism, sexism, or any explicit hatefulness will be deleted. In addition, these rules will be put in place to uphold the standard of respect desired on Street Stories. People who comment the following will be banned from commenting:

  • Name-calling, insulting, or attacking someone mentioned in a blog post, NightShift, or another site user
  • Posting inappropriate or abusive comments
  • Posting comments that question or devalue the voices of vulnerable people

These guidelines were inspired by Book Riot’s guidelines.

PROCESS POST: Class response (week 11)

This process post will be a response to the guest speaker we had in class named Darren Barefoot, who works with Capulet Communications. This was my favourite guest speaker we had this semester. Darren’s work reflects a lot of what I want to do in the future, which is marketing and communications for non-profit organizations. What compelled me most about Darren’s talk was when he spoke about Heartbeats and Remarkables. Heartbeats can be defined by the core operations of marketing within an organization. For example, every year NightShift does a fundraising gala and that is a Heartbeat of who they are and how they draw attention to their organizations. Another thing Darren talked about was Remarkables. Remarkables are campaigns that are out of the ordinary. They can look like PR stunts, gimmicks, pop-up events, or unique fundraising mechanisms.

For a good portion of the class we talked about Remarkables and different ones that Capulet has been involved with over the years. My favourite type of Remarkable campaigns Darren spoke about were volunteer activations. These types of campaigns generally call for high threshold volunteerism. An example he gave was when a cancer agency worked with a hair salon to create a new haircut that inspired people to cut their hair for cancer. Although it is a big ask for people to cut their hair, it is a remarkable marketing tactic that people will remember.

I am so grateful that Darren spoke with our class! I learned a lot from him and I will definitely be looking at Capulet’s website to learn from the way they do things and check out their featured Remarkables.

PUB 101- Essay 2

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

Before I get a chance to understand publishing, I thought it was merely publishing a book, sell it to somewhere, people read it and done. I never thought about the actual work and story behind every process until I get a chance to started writing my blog, publishing my work and sharing content to the audience. In the past 12 weeks, fortunately, I have an opportunity to experience how is it to be an online publisher. It might I need to overrate my self, online publisher, but I did have a chance to understand more details regarding editorial, design, marketing and content. After the brief online publisher career, I realized that publish good content. A successful model is much more complicated than I imagine. There are so much more than I could imagine before, lots of affording and work behind every process.


In this semester, I get a chance to experience to open my blog lift for live. I created my blog and shared my idea and through to other people. I created a fitness-focused blog to share my workout ideas and recommendation to other people so as to motivate people who are new to workout or want to know more about it. Everything started from sketching on my sketchbook, I drew the outline of the blog, considered the focus of the content and what was my purpose of creating a blog. Throughout the semester, I constantly change and improve my blog editorial concept, design layout and content. At first, I was using a big cover picture with a link at the middle. I thought that was a good idea that matches the current trend of blog design until I read Travis Gertz “Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse.” In the article, Travis explained that all the webpage design are the same right now. All of them are sharing the same elements, and he asked a question to the audience “Without the logos, could you tell which companies own which screenshots?”(Gertz, 2015, para 7). I realized that If I put my page in one of the design, I could not tell which website is mine. Travis indicated that digital design is a human assembly line, designers are like a designer machine, they use the same elements over and over again to fulfill the trend of the world. As a design student, it was a wakeup call of mine. Therefore, I started to search other themes on the template. Although I can not do much configure on the webpage, I tried to find the theme that produces a different atmosphere but meanwhile match up with my theme. I ended up using the theme right now which is a slideshow post along with posts content below.


Besides the design elements, editorial and content design are also crucial in online publishing. Choose of words and tones are essential to content design, what do you want to build up the relationship. Friendly? Inform? Alternatively, Educate? Based on the tone we choose, the blog purpose may shift. In my blog, I decided to use a relatively friendly tone to my audience, and I intended to share my personal experience rather than teach them how to do it. I wanted to shorten the distance between me and the audience. Befriend with them rather than be a teacher of them.


Marketing strategies are one of the parts that I feel interested the most. From Shelby Carpenter essay “The Toast Is Toast: Literary Humor Site Shuts Down Over Ad Revenue Woes,” it gave me a brief concept of the current online publishing industry. Absorb the failure of the Toast, and I understand that as a publisher, it is necessary to set up the mission statement and ensure the niche of the topic. It will be challenging if the purpose is unclear throughout the publishing process. Also, proper marketing is crucial in a successfulness of business. In other words, you need to make sure your company earn money and make a balance in your business, increase the sustainability of the publishing of the business. In peer review 3, Joanna Kim gave me some ideas about what should I do to make my blog profitable. She points out that my blog should more closely relate to my training. She suggested that I should post a blog about my transformation to let the audience pay close attention to me so as to increase the publicity.


Looking back the semester, I learned many concepts from the course. It expanded my vision, publishing is not only in paperback and e-book, but the online trend is also taking over the publishing industry. Online publishing and marketing is the new benchmark in the publishing industry. No doubt printed publishing is still playing an important role in publishing, but the trend of online publishing is also arising.

Week 12: Online Shaming

In our second to the last week, we got to watch Jon Ronson’s TED talk When online shaming goes too far. He gave plenty examples of people who got affected by people who take the original post’s context or message out of proportion. The talk was compelling because it’s telling of how mob mentality can be dangerous in social media. I’ve seen many examples where even sharing from one account to another already leads to problems. It can ruin people’s lives. This is the world we live in. Information feels infinite and we take these small, consumable tidbits of information and blow it out. Jon Ronson did a great job presenting the helplessness that these people feel. Justine Sacco intended to mimic Americans who were ignorant of Africa as a whole and tweeted this:

In context, it makes sense. It makes sense to her friends and the people who know her but once it was shared by strangers, she was part of a social media crucifixion. They were ready to see what happens to her when she gets off the plane. She received the most unbelievable hate speech despite not knowing who she is. Her life has changed because people held on to this small piece of the Internet and created their own narrative. Online shaming reveals the human nature of being a part of something, but for the wrong reasons.

Week 11: Remarkables

Darren  Barefoot from Capulet Communications accompanied by Sarah came into our class and talked about remarkables. For those who are unaware like I was, Capulet explains it well: Remarkables are high impact digital marketing campaigns meant to attract attention. These are the campaigns you remember even if you are not the target audience. These are the campaigns that stand out because they can easily take a simple idea and turn its head to be memorable. What I appreciate most about this presentation was that it gave context to how impactful it can be. Despite it being rooted in capital and business, the messages and content can easily transcend that.

For example, the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice provides pediatric palliative care to families across British Columbia. This can be a stressful and depressing place for everyone because it’s taking care of very sick children and making their end a bit easier. Capulet did a fantastic remarkable where they created a blanket fort with a complete library and toys for the kids to play just for the afternoon. This gave such a positive environment for everyone involved. For a grim place, they turned it to a place where they can be happy in.

It’s a great example in how it reaches multiple channels and then getting their messages across through these. The local news channels started covering it. They were posting in social media. It is posted on different blogs. Different people and networks are talking about and that’s powerful. They don’t have to be vested in the hospice or the people who are involved, but a remarkable can transcend the oversaturation of media content felt by many online users. There’s enough “feel good” on the internet but there’s also too many depressing topics and articles. Remarkables can leave an impact and be spoken above these.

Peer Review 3: Taking Life by the Love Handles

For my peer review, I am reviewing Jenella’s blog titled Taking Life by the Love Handles.

A quick glance of her homepage, I know why she chooses this theme. The pink tones and colorful photos of food are welcoming. The white is a nice contrast to highlight her blog content and it helps accentuate the colors of her photos. It’s appealing and easy on the eyes. It compels me to read more!

As you scroll down her homepage, her social media pages are easily available. To me, this is showing that she markets her personality with her blog. They go hand in hand and I believe she includes her own ‘self’ into her content. Where she eats tells something a little bit more about herself.

Food is the center of her brand, and she makes it clear. On her About page, she explains why she loves food and why it’s important to her. This idea and how she presents it is creating a space where she expresses herself and why she writes about food. She even addresses this when she shares her personal experience on doing something other than food on her Food and Friends blog.

These ideas are present and explained danah boyd’s It’s Complicated where she writes about the feeling of togetherness and through networked publics, communities can be connected through technology. For Jenella, she is creating this blog of togetherness. Almost all her times eating out are with friends! She shares her physical experiences through this network and her other channels.

She does a great job showcasing this physical space too. With her social media presence and her appealing photos, she is spreading wide on multiple channels. The pictures serve as a tangible step to a purely networked space. As seen in the Youtube stars’ trend on publishing books,  it’s good to have a balance of online and offline content. Her blog posts have a balance of media and text. It’s a bonus that she takes great photos!

I do want to suggest a way to have these ideas better presented in her blog. I feel that she has a lot to say, and it doesn’t have to sacrifice the content she already writes.

Hot Ones on Youtube

Hot Ones is one of my favorite web series because it brings a fresh take on interviews; eating very spicy wings and talking. What I want to highlight for Jenella’s blog is the fact that some guests do a great job conversing about the wings and about their careers well that it becomes an interview for both. Alton Brown comes to mind. Each restaurant she goes to does not necessarily need a ‘deep’ or ‘introspective’ conversation with her friends, but I see her as being part of the content too. I’m curious to see why she chooses this restaurant or what is exciting or familiar about this restaurant? These elements would give more ‘food’ to the readers about who she is and exemplify the reasons she loves the food.

Week 10: Internet For All

I remember seeing the Internet.org advertisements on the bus stops. They were everywhere. It was a call to have internet for all. I remember the ad wanted to give voice to areas that didn’t have internet. It wanted to connect the great minds and make it an equal field for the passionate ones. Until I read Mike Elgan’s The surprising truth about Facebook’s Internet.org for the class this week that I was reminded of that advertisement and, knowing Facebook’s reputation, I’m not surprised to find out the truth.

Internet.org, instead of connecting people with harder access of the internet, is actually just bringing in more people to sign up to their platform. They’re not interested in connecting people. They’re interested in the data that’s being surrendered. Now called Free Basics, Facebook targets countries that charge internet by the minute. They also take these users away and put them in Facebook’s own servers as a way to ‘save data usage’. They keep the users in Facebook in disguise of connecting them because they want to take complete control of their internet use and box them in using Facebook services. I like the metaphor that Elgan uses. It’s like giving a poor person a free sesame seed and claiming credit for giving them a free Big Mac.

This is important to speak about because these are multi billion dollar companies playing with user information. There’s no reason to fully trust these companies because they’re in for the business. If they claim some altruistic interest, it’s probably going to earn them money. Social networks have been controlled by capital and it will continue to take advantage of our use if we don’t question it. When I read this article, I consciously forgot the good and hope I felt when I saw the advertisement. I needed to be critical and realize that the ad played on my emotions and feel goodness. It just wanted to take my information. And by being critical and aware, I remember the ad for what it is, not what it was selling to me.

PROCESS POST: Create a goal (week 10)

There’s not much traffic coming through to my blog, so I’m not sure how much weight the statistics that are offered by Google Analytics hold in terms of seeing how my content is being received. From what I can see, my bounce rate is sitting well at just over 26%, and the bulk of my page views (39.08%) sit with my homepage.

I created a goal for my blog conversions called “Time Spent.” I found it kind of funny to make a goal, considering I basically get no traffic to my site. But, maybe one day this goal will be put to good use. I wanted to focus my goal on the duration of time spent on my site because I want to know that people are taking the time to actually read my posts. I set the goal for 3 minutes, because I figured that is a good amount of time for someone to navigate my site, find a post, and read it. Currently, the average amount of time people spend on a page on my site is just over 2 minutes. Although it’s nice to imagine people staying on my site for longer, I am content to start out with the goal of keeping people on my site long enough to read one post. As I get more established with my blog, I would hope that people would engage with my content and explore my posts for longer.  

Peer Review #3

In the peer review 3, this time I am going to review Joanne Kim website- Joanne Noella. Joanne’s blog is a lifestyle blog, shares her own experience with people. She shares different a variety of content to viewers, from daily saving advice to fashion and health. Many interesting though blended into her lifestyle blog. When I first clicked on the blog, there are a big clean heading media along with the white colour background, it created a clean and soft atmosphere to the blog. On the menu bar, there are eight different categories. It is a clearly separate different section in the blog which could increase the usability to navigate reader to their content. The blog overall produce a young and energetic style to the reader and it is matching up the theme of the blog, a 18 years old school girl lifestyle blog. 

Joanne’s blog is a teenagers lifestyle blog, the target audience of this blog should be around 15 – 23 years old adolescent who is sharing the similar lifestyle and experience. The reason for me choosing intended audience around 15 – 23, because the style of the blog is on teenagers style, from the fashion to the saving advice, all the problems Joanne listed will more likely appear at the age between 15- 23 age group. People who are facing the same problem will more likely to surf the blog to seek advice and help.

This is an interesting blog to take a glance and search for some interesting topic, however, I think the blog is low on marketability. Although the blog contains many different topics and ideas, the blog is not specific enough in one field. To marketing a blog or anything, it is crucial to set up a niche and focus on what you are targeting to market the product. There are too many fields in the same blog, for instance, some posts on the blog are about money saving, some posts are about health and workout exercise, and some posts about personal life and fashion. A wide range of topic no doubt could expand the market, but it will also decrease the marketability. Banner Ads could be one of the solutions for the blog, but it could raise the profit quite and die down in a hot minute. The Toast blog went down is an example. The Toast had no specific mission statement for the blog. They use different ads try to boost up the sale but it did not succeed. The marketing style leads The Toast couldn’t make enough money and struggle to keep it afloat. The same problem is happening in Joanne’s blog. 

To increase the marketability, Joanne’s blog needs to restrict the area of her work. It is not necessary to cut down most of the topic but try to maintain in certain field. For example, try to focus on what teenagers interested the most, like fashion and workout. Combine the money saving and personal experience into those two primary object. It will help to set up a niche and make the blog marketable. 

Week 9: My Infographic

I had very little experience with creating infographics. I’m not capable of making one from scratch so I opted for the free ones! Thankfully, I’ve used Piktochart to create mine and it’s very simple. With free software (and limited knowledge of the software), I came up with a very simple one.

my desktop screen

I wasn’t comfortable showing who I am online because I still have this unfamiliarity with blogs. So, I focused on my own online activities and how that represents me.

Discord and Reddit are big time spenders I have online. I like to be on Reddit because I can browse for news and find updates on topics that I follow. I don’t usually engage because I’m content with reading. I occasionally comment, but I prefer to stay anonymous. I use Discord because a few of my close friends are on there, and it’s an easy way to communicate when we play games online. These 2 are part of my online self. I am active in my own circles, but curious in others.

Instagram is the closest platform for me that represents my ideal online. I also want to create content that’s eye catching and interesting. I do have pieces of my personal life on there, but I try to keep it vague. I use it the most often because it’s a good aggregation of content that I want to see (especially the many dog accounts). All this combined represents who I am online, and I kept the theme neutral to focus on these aspects.

Process Post Prompt: How I build my inforgraphic image.

The infographic image I was based on my blog content to develop the infographic. I use numbers to catch people attention at the graphic. All the numbers came from my weekly blog concept, such as 6 fundamental movement pattern, 5 muscles parts split routine, etc. The infographic is aiming to minimal the content but gives out the largest concept to the audience. 

I designed this infographic on illustrator, use lines and boxes based on my original blog design. The text I used “PROHIBITION” typeface which is provide a relative strong and muscular feeling to the text. It can brings up the theme of the topic.

PROCESS POST: Create an Ad (week 9)

Considering the content of my site, I think that monetizing it would look like finding a creative way to raise money for NightShift Ministries. I saw another organization do a campaign for youth homelessness, and I think it would work extremely well in the context of my blog. The idea is that people would volunteer to sleep outside for one night and ask their friends and family to support them in this by donating money towards NightShift. The goal of my blog partnering with NightShift for this campaign would be to raise awareness for people sleeping on the streets throughout the cold winter months, and to raise funds towards the meals and other resources that NightShift provides for these people each day.

The call to action on social media would look a bit like this:

On November 27, sleep outside with us and help us to reach our goal of raising $1000 towards NightShift Ministries, an organization that supports our friends who sleep on the street every night. To sign up, click here! To donate, click here!

I would aim for this to be a full campaign, partnered with NightShift, that would draw attention to both their organization and what they do to support the vulnerable in Surrey, as well as drawing attention to the stories told through my blog.

Another idea I had is to do a “Closet Cleanout” campaign to encourage people to donate clothing they aren’t wearing to NightShift. This would be held at NightShift, and all clothing brought would be donated to them. Additionally, I could get the name of my site out into the public because a lot of people are interested in helping others in the winter time. It would be a good opportunity for me to get the name of my blog out there, while simultaneously drawing in clothing donations for the organization.

The call to action on social media would be a version of this:

Do you have any extra coats, sweaters, gloves, or boots? Winter is approaching, and our friends are living on the street. Participate in our Closet Cleanout with NightShift on November 22nd to give to those in need.

These ads would be posted on Instagram and Facebook. I would post them on Instagram because that’s where my target audience (young adults) would most likely see the ads. I would post them on Facebook because Facebook is a very events based app. I would hope that these ads would draw attention to homelessness in Surrey, NightShift, and my blog.

Mini Assignment #3

This time I use clips from Ronnie Coleman. I mixed different clips together along with mixed background music to create this video. Enjoy!

  • Sources: Apple music 
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWgSTdkc2A
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IaMMu1ckv8
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydmgd81zczg
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lVMwl3FsPg

Essay 1: Social Media is Capitalistic, Not Democratic

On February 2014, Facebook introduced an update called the real name policy (Bivens, 2017). This introduction increased gender identifications from 2 to 58 (Bivens, 2017). As an attempt of inclusivity, Facebook is perceived to be giving a democratic response to a growing concern of minorities in online spaces. More users can now choose who they identify themselves as without compromising their self-identity. However, after the policy has been implemented, many queer and LGBTQ members reported that they can no longer access their profile because their names do not fit with their supposed identity (Bivens, 2017). Facebook may be giving power to its queer users, but I argue that’s not the case. I argue that social media is capitalistic, not democratic. LGBTQ users’ names and genders are to fit in the heteronormative standard in order for marketers and the state to keep track of its citizens through surveillance and protection (MacAulay & Moldes, 2016). Non-binary users are always recoded back to the binary system, exposing the inauthentic gesture of Facebook as inclusive and democratic (Bivens, 2017). LGBTQ users’ fluid and changing experiences cannot be truly represented online. Thus, hindering their entrepreneurial pursuits and community building (Lingel & Golub, 2015).

On Facebook’s Help Center, there is a section that acknowledges names on Facebook (Facebook, 2018). Aside from the things to keep in mind, the standards specify that the name should appear on and ID or part of their ID document list (Facebook, 2018). This means that an expected first and last name must be created for the user. This may not necessarily reflect on queer identities and that already causes conflicts. 

The PEW Research conducted a survey on 1197 self-identified LGBT adults 18 years or older asking about their online use (PEW, 2013). Eighty percent of respondents use sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but the survey shows prohibiting behaviours online (PEW, 2013). Fifty six percent of surveyors said that they have not revealed their sexual identities online, and 83% do not regularly discuss LGBT issues online (PEW, 2013). LGBT groups experience different treatment in these online spaces, but still continue to use it. With Facebook’s real name policy, there was an attempt to be inclusive. Facebook is now in support of these minorities, and empowering them through their profiles. But as seen in MacAulay & Moldes, Bivens, and Lingel & Golub’s works, Facebook is driven by capitalistic notions, disguising their authentic gestures to mask its market driven responses.

MacAulay & Moldes acknowledges that Facebook uses the real name policy to justify legal precedents and cite harmful actions towards others such as harassment, impersonation and trolling (2016). While these seem legitimate concerns, they find that they’re less interested in protecting them rather than making the users ‘transparent to the market and the state’ (MacAulay & Moldes, 2016). A key concept they identify stemming from queer theory is normativity (or heteronormativity). This is described as a regulatory system that naturalizes sex and gender (MacAulay & Moldes, 2016). This process of normativity means that agents and groups take the effort to impose and force individuals to fit into existing systems to keep order or regulate easier. Heteronormativity then entails that binary systems (male and female) are the correct and only way to follow due to economic and legal precedents. This means that anyone who deviates from it are not ‘performing correctly’ (MacAulay & Moldes, 2016). Data collection is another issue that they bring up because this forces users who actively avoid as part of Facebook’s marketer aggregation. They have to choose between binary choices that will not fit them, and that can result in their accounts being banned or ultimately not use the service anymore. A democratic practice in social media will allow any individual to self-express and create within their own public spaces, but the notion of heteronormativity does not give that space to queer users. It simply favours what funds the company running the service. They also cite the increase of market shares that occurred in 2014 after the real name policy was introduced. Market shares in 2011 decreased to 19.82 USD after reports of fake users on Facebook surfaced and after the real name policy was implemented, the shares rose to 78.02 USD in December 2014 (MacAulay & Moldes, 2016). The theory of normativity serves as a great interest to what can be marketed and how that affects minorities who want to use Facebook. And these experiences continue to exist.

Bivens examined Facebook’s gender coding system and found that when coding the genders, females were assigned 1, males were assigned 2, and the ‘undefined’ were assigned 0 (2017). This undefined category has been the standard for coding non-binary genders and how that allows Facebook to include so many gender options. On one hand, the number 0 allows for the existence of non-binaries, but does not exactly fit into the binary code (Bivens, 2017). Bivens found that later updates to the code see that newly assigned genders and their code will default to the undefined because the codes were not established since creating it (2017). The 56 additional genders are now, in the back end, defaulted to 0 even if it is given a defined gender (Bivens, 2017). This allowed Facebook to easily aggregate data that can be sent to marketers who are only interested in the binary genders (Bivens, 2017). The nuances and multiple gender identities have been devolved to 0 and continuously will not receive the technological support on Facebook. These regulations are masked as authenticity, and it does not seem democratic. Rather, it forces its users into shaping to what is acceptable online and what numbers can be easily assigned to them so that it can be quickly shared and sold online. 

It does not support the lives and work of other members of the community too. Drag users are greatly affected by restricting user information flexibility to fit with their fluid and changing personalities to continuously be entertaining drag queens (Lingel & Golub, 2015). Online identity work has become an extension of their own work, and that continuity allows them to stay connected with their fans and fellow queens. It supports them in a capitalistic sense that allows them to advertise their shows and market their identities, but it does not allow multiple identities (Lingel & Golub, 2015). This, again, falls into the notion of normativity where they are forced into one trackable identity. Facebook acknowledges an inclusivity of users, but does not acknowledge multiple and fluid online identities (Lingel & Golub, 2015). Instead, it advocates a unifying and unitary profile (Lingel & Golub, 2015). While drags do not represent the majority of the LGBTQ community, these collective experiences contribute to a shared, limited, and constrained online experience that does not allow the desired expectation to freely express themselves. Rather, they have to fit the normative mold to appease Facebook’s marketers and regulators. The real name policy is just another example in online social spaces that operates to generate revenue. Facebook acts for money, not for its users.

Reference

Bivens, R. (2017). The gender binary will not be deprogrammed: Ten years of coding gender on Facebook. New Media & Society, 19(6), 880–898. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1177/1461444815621527.

Facebook (2018). What names are allowed on Facebook? Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576?helpref=faq_content.

Lingel, J., & Golub, A. (2015). In Face on Facebook: Brooklyn’s Drag Community and Sociotechnical Practices of Online Communication: IN FACE ON FACEBOOK. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(5), 536-553.

MacAulay, M., & Moldes, M. (2016). Queen don’t compute: Reading and casting shade on Facebook’s real names policy. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(1), 6-22.

PEW Research Center (2013, June 13). A survey of LGBT Americans: LGBT adults online. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/06/13/a-survey-of-lgbt-americans/.

Mini Assignment 4: Remix Something!

Hi, my girlfriend took a really cute interaction of 2 dogs. We both love a Shiba Inu so this is extra great to me. She did her own edit to it, but I wanted to make my own remix to it. This is my mood for how aggressive all this productivity is to me. I chose the biggest looming figure over me that’s intimidating me. It’s not the smartphones that I’m writing about. It’s this:

yup.

My Transmedia Strategy | Week 10

Before knowing the “transmedia”, I was already critically aware of the importance of having not just a cohesive online brand, but one that cross-promoted itself. Before starting djalexrose.com (and still now), Instagram was my primary social media platform. I had always promoted my Soundcloud using the business website function and by posting previews of songs, however, now the connection is deeper. My Instagram and Snapchats focus primarily on “story” function engagement with polls, event promotions, and exclusive media.

My Facebook and Twitter are both quite neglected, being automated to post content whenever I upload to Youtube and Soundcloud. I’ve heard from colleagues that Facebook has a much stronger ROI on advertisements than Instagram (which I recently tried) so I’ll be investing more into that platform soon. As of now, neither one has exclusive content.

Soundcloud has shifted to have only my best musical content. From originals to bootlegs to remixes, Soundcloud houses all the tracks that make it Spotify and ones that can’t clear copyright but are still strong releases. It also includes links to all my other social media platforms.

Youtube is the king of my content strategy. It’s home to weekly vlogs, 30-80 minute mixes, exclusive mashups, and much more. As you can see, djalexrose.com remains a focal point being included in my banner.

The final service I’ll mention is ArtistUnion, a download-gate service that exchanges downloads of your music for specified actions. In my case, I require my audience follows my Soundcloud and like and reposts the song they wish to download.

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Insights from my Google Analytics | Week 9

Let’s start off with my User Overview. We will look at my data since the website’s inception in January, including February 20 – March 10th whose data was lost due to a tracking code issue. My traffic is relatively low and consistent. According to 21 Handshake, my type of site has an average bounce rate of 70-90%. Compared to this benchmark, my bounce rate is very good at 38.44%, however, my low amount of users makes most of my analytics insubstantial. The biggest thing I’ve taken from this section is to remove my Youtube videos from my site as session durations are too short for them to be relevant.

Next up: some technology-related data. Most of my users are in the Apple ecosystem and use Google Chrome like myself. Not much to say here other than I may consider implementing an Apple Music widget as well, seeing as my music is hosted there as well as Spotify.

Now for geography. The website follows my Instagram and Soundcloud analytics in that I am predominantly popular in the United States and Canada. Interestingly, the website maintains my popularity from Spotify which is concentrated in Latin America, especially Chile and Brazil. This is most likely due to name confusion with Latin artist Alex Rose (the reason my name is spelt “alex rose”).

How about discovery? Well, there’s a pretty even split between Direct, Social, and Referral here. Most of my social traffic comes from Instagram (my primary social media for engaging my audience) and I’ve also seen a lot of traffic from my peers’ websites referring users to me. I should continue focusing on my Instagram as a traffic source and expand my collaboration to ensure more referrals. Finally, I plan to improve my SEO to see my organic search improve.

 Finally, pageviews broke down by page. No surprise that my homepage would have the most traffic. It’s also comforting to see that my shows page, where my audience can purchase tickets and RSVP to events, is second most popular. Shows are a growing form of revenue for me so this is a welcome insight. Unfortunately, my blog doesn’t appear to get much attention. Most of my blog content can be found directly on my Youtube, but moving forward I plan to have exclusive blog content focused on SEO friendly tutorial content.

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