Tag Archives: PUB201
Why Only Send PR to White Influencers?
Things I Like to Blog About …
Caffeinated Tammy: A Moodboard
Can You Trust Influencers?
Press Release: Caffeinated Tammy
Peer Review #3: Reimagining Horror
Peer Review #2 : The Quaint Nook
The (Much Deserved) Rise of the BIPOC-fluencers
Are you a good Influencer?
Peer Review 3
For this last peer review of PUB201, I would like to discuss Gracie’s website, “Sincerely, Gracie“. First of all, from the web title, I assumed her blog would be where she shares her journals and stories, as it gives off a friendly and warm vibe. With her tagline as “My Photos & My Thoughts”, it proves that my guess was close. From what she wrote on the front page, it appears that she is a writer and photographer from Vancouver, BC.
The Content
There are five main pages featured on her home page menu: Amusing, Photo Diary, Digital Portfolio, PUB 201, and Contact. I find the Musings page quite interesting. It is not a bad idea to have a separate page for the comment section since the audience may share their thoughts on more general inquiries than the fixed topics within her content. So far, all of her content is in the form of images, and they are all gathered in the Digital portfolio section.
The Design and Layout
The website’s theme is a bit plain with the two main colours of blue and mostly white. So far, this choice of design and layout has yet to convincingly represent her branding as a writer and photographer. The layout leaves too much white space on her pages. I really like that she made good use of her photographs. However, more description is needed to connect with the audience, and I would absolutely love to read more about her story.
Suggestions
As for Gracie’s home page, I think that she should write more about her brand’s story, how she found her passion for photography, and maybe talk a little about her plan to develop the website. Throughout the course, Gracie shared that her brand’s mission is “To convey inspiring stories, experiences, and messages through photographs”. However, with a lack of information on her brand’s backstory, this mission may not be fully conveyed to the audience. It would be better for her brand if she included the statement at the end of her about section. Also, instead of having a separate page for contact information, she could create a sidebar widget that includes links to her social media. This not only gives the audience a broader view of her social platforms but also acts as a filler for white spaces on her site.
A website with a unique layout and colour palette is very important to make your brand stand out and reach more viewers. What Gracie could do to improve her visual presentation is reflect on her brand to find a suitable yet outstanding theme and try out different colour combinations that catch people’s eyes. One more thing I would like to suggest to improve her portfolio is that she can sort her work into different sections. From what I see, her portfolio now looks like a photo dumpster with no specifications. I think maybe adding titles and descriptions to each group of images would be a good way to communicate with the audience.
Conclusion
Overall, I like the branding idea of “Sincerely, Gracie”. It would be perfect if Gracie spent more time exploring some of the plugins to upgrade the web design. That way, her brand would attract more viewers. I hope to see more written content on her website soon, as I am curious about her as a writer.
Good luck Gracie!
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savannahswatske.com – Peer Review 3
For our final peer review, I was paired with Savannah, who runs savannahswatske.com, a personal blog dedicated to “lifestyle, travel, [and] health & wellness”.
Savannah’s blog is visually stunning, something that visitors can immediately feel soothed and welcome by. The design is very user-friendly and simplistic, which lends great to accessibility while staying within a clean and modern aesthetic.
The About Me page centres the framing of the website, and serves as a great introduction to Savannah’s brand and personality. I really like how clear her mission statement is without explicitly stating that it is her brand’s mission. While I tend to follow content creators who fit into more specific niches that align with my interests, the brand and business narrative being presented here are very effective and have piqued my interest greatly. Savannah notes that she strives to be “authentic” on her About page, and that authenticity is extremely present and what is keeping me enticed by her brand.
From that, the posts on the site are very reflective of the overall goals. The content of the website is very well aligned to the topics outlined in the About page, with each topic of interest clearly organized in the drop-down menu. I really appreciate the raw honesty in her post Well, It Finally Happened… in which she discusses testing positive for COVID-19. It’s personable in the way it’s written and the subject matter, but the categorization of the post fits seamlessly in with the branding of the blog. I also really enjoyed reading R.I.P. To My Bank Account. I love fashion and clothes, so it was great to see some very nice pieces, but also to learn more about who Savannah is. All of her posts have that same theme of fitting with her interests and speaking to her personality, which achieves her blog mission incredibly.
I completely agree with Cailey’s peer review of Savannah’s site, especially with the emphasis on how Savannah is inviting her audience into what works for her and encouraging them to find their own ways and inspiration from her, rather than telling them what to do. I also think that Savannah should continue to focus on copy editing her content, as there were a few typos in the posts I looked at.
In terms of monetization, the site’s design makes it friendly for advertising, and making ads stand out. While I think the site could use Google Ads, or other kinds of banner ads, I believe sponsorships and affiliate links would be more effective and logical ways of monetizing. For example, I think having a discount code or a sponsored post for comfortable and fashionable workout clothes would fit really well into her brand, all without forcing banner ads or clicks, which can deter an audience. This would be great on the blog itself, or on her YouTube channel, where sponsored content and banner/preroll ads can generate funds.
Overall, I think Savannah’s blog is very well branded and extremely compelling. She has found a wonderful balance of the personal and professional self in her content, which is great for drawing in a broad audience and for monetization. I really look forward to seeing how her blog and brand continue to develop!
Our Branding Story
Our branding story told in gifs!
From a love of books as a small child, to a book obsession, to a passion for pride and intersectionality, and finally to being a enthusiastic writer – all leading to the creation of a diverse book blog!
Peer Review 2
Hi, everyone. Today I would like to discuss my peer Kelly’s blog, “Kelly in Saturn.” Looking at the home page, I could feel a very calming vibe. The description of the blog is placed in a block on the sidebar. It states clearly that her blog focuses on her daily self-care routine.
The content
After browsing the website, I got some main points about “Kelly in Saturn”.
Her blog was created last month, which was at the beginning of this semester, so there are only a few posts. However, she is doing really well in building her online self. It seems that her content is not just about self-care; it is also about personal opinions on social issues, mental health issues, and updates on daily activities.
Storytelling is crucial to a brand’s image. Sometimes, stories can make a brand venerable. Hence, if it is interpreted in the right way, it reflects the background story of the brand, represents the brand and inspires the audience. By engaging the audience with her own stories, using universal language and a neutral tone, the brand’s backstory is subconsciously shaped in the minds of the readers. At the same time, it encourages the readers to take care of their lifestyle by showing empathy through Kelly’s daily life stories. In one of her posts, I like how she uses the lunar new year as a bridge to discuss Asian hate crime in New York, which has been aching on social media a lot recently.
The five main pages are organized on the menu bar: About, Blog, Resources, Personal Projects, and Pub 201. On the “About” page, Kelly explains the reason behind her brand name and briefly introduces the blog to establish a standard foundation relationship with the audience. The “Resources” section really impressed me with how she managed to make connections for her brand in the early days. To me, as a reader, it’s interesting to be able to quickly find her other works in the “Personal Project” section.
The design and layout
The main colours of the website, which are marigold, midnight blue, and off yellow, harmonize well together. With her art as most of the illustrations, it does mark the brand’s existence, making it stand out and unique. The layout of the website is not too dense but also not too loose, leaving enough blank space to ease the eyes of readers.
Conclusion
Overall, I think Kelly has built her brand really well, especially in terms of storytelling. Although the website is new, it has a lot of potential. I would like to thank Kelly for creating such a fascinating website to spread positive energy to everyone. It is exciting to see how the brand will grow in the future.
Good luck, Kelly!
Reference
Suzanne Norman. “Week Six-PUB 201 Brand Storytelling” PowerPoint slides.
Press Release: Slayer Willow is now on libib.com!
Slayer Willow is now on libib.com! Libib is a site similar to Goodreads where you can catalogue books, but also music, movies, and video games. Libib is more all encompassing of different media, providing more opportunity for cataloguing across interests—this can be especially useful when tracking book-related media, such as movie adaptations. Libib is also an alternative for book tracking and cataloguing for those who do not want to support Amazon-owned Goodreads. You can find us on Libib here!
Process Post | Beyond Blog
Reading about artificial intelligence (AI), I began to think of ways to implement this technology into my blog. One way is to import an AI chatbot app into my WordPress template and start an automatic reply chat area for readers. There several plugins to choose from including Botsify, Chatfuel, Flow XO, Landbot.io, Hubspot, Collect.chat and more. With plenty of YouTube tutorial videos available and my basic coding skills, I think it will be easy to manage.
The overall flow of the chatbot experience would be first greeting the audiences, like “Welcome to my blog! Are you looking for…”, then let them choose the pre-programmed choice of “Travel”, “Restaurant” or “Information”. Each choice will correspond to “Travel with Me”, “Eat with Me” and “Learn with Me” section of the blog. After choosing from these categories, readers will type keywords of what they are looking for and related articles will be listed. For example, if a visitor chose “Restaurant”, then typed the keyword “fish”, it will bring them to a result with restaurants that have fish dishes. In my current blog it will be the “Eat | Zauo Main Store”, “Eat | Umeyama Teppei Shokudou” and “Eat | Kane Hannosuke” posts.
Another feature can be having a “Knowledge of the day” selection within the chatbot. This will generate a result of a randomly picked post from the “Learn from Me” section. This function encourages audiences to check out different types of posts that they might not have thought of, but interested to read once provided.
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Peer Review Three
The site that I am reviewing this week is Marylou Villegas’s blog (http://marylouvillegas.com/). Marylou Villegas is a singer, songwriter and a silver award Youtuber with more than 100,000 followers. This blog is another platform for her to share her creativity and build up her brand.
The site has several compelling and recognizable branding elements, including the harmonious theme colours of natural earthy wood tones, warm white, browns and black. The consistent use of fairy light is also very interesting, giving visitors a more memorizable first impression.
Marylou is doing a great job in terms of monetization as YouTube offers financial awards for successful YouTubers like her. She also has a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify account, allowing audiences to subscribe to her regular content updates. I believe that the major focus of Marylou is her YouTube channel since it is the platform that generates the most revenue. Other social media, including this blog, are some platforms for her to attract more subscribers and more importantly, maintain interactions with her current fan base.
In the second peer review, Marylou was recommended to decrease the size of some header images to reduce scrolls. I believe that she implemented this suggestion as no big image header is found on the contact and PUB201 page. Content on the “Home” page and “About” page can be reached within 1 scroll, which works perfectly well. The second suggestion from the peer review for Marylou is to be more active on social media, which I definitely agree with. Knowing that her Instagram account has the biggest follow comparing to other social media, I would recommend an update on Instagram at least once a week and once a month for other platforms. This will keep her subscribers engaged and maintain a closer relationship. Marylou surely has her own style when it comes to posting videos and creating content, which explains how she made it into such great success. Yet, after browsing through the YouTube channel, I feel like I would also want to see more about her personal life, or maybe some processes behind all the creative works. These contents might be a good fit for platforms outside of YouTube.
I really enjoyed Marylou’s blog and her skillful use of all social media platforms. She is pursuing her YouTube business into the next level and expanding through all types of media. I really look forward to her next YouTube video!
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Process Post | Data
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the biggest things right now when talking about data and such. For my website, without doing anything yet, it already appeared as the very first search result when googled with the keywords “Nihon Shoku”. I thought it is due to my cache and cookies, but even when I open an incognito window the same result showed up.
This is actually the first time for me to google my blog’s name, and I am quite surprised by the result. I realized that it might be due to the uncommon phrase “nihon shoku”. It can be an advantage and prove that my blog has a unique name, but at the same time showing uncommonness of this phrase. I also learned the reason why my blog was visited by viewers from Malaysia with a very high bounce rate. It is because there is a Japanese restaurant in Malaysia named “JyuJyu-Tei by Nihon Shoku”.
Another round of googling was done by search keywords in post titles. As expected nothing from my post appeared in the search result, also meaning that no travellers will be able to reach my site by googling. This is a great loss for me since a lot of people research for their trips by browsing on Google, yet, my contents are not listed. The result has persuaded me to put online resources, like Google Academy, into good use during the quarantine period and work on the SEO for my website. Although it might not boost up my blog to a significant level, it is definitely a milestone that worth my time.
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Process Post | Monetize
When thinking of ways to monetization of a blog, the first idea that comes in mind is through advertisement banners. Yet, these banners are not only distracting but also receive a very low amount of clicks. Hence, I suggest myself to work with advertisers and compose sponsored content on my blog as a post. This does not only makes my website clean and more professional but also provides advertisers with more space to expand on the selling points of their products. Possible advertisers will be Japanese restaurants in Vancouver or Japan, agencies that hold local food tours in Japan, companies that produce food-related travel tools like restaurant rating mobile apps, and any other business that is related to both food and travelling in Japan.
However, I need a much larger readership before I will be able to get any sponsors. Therefore, I will keep working without making revenue until I gain at least 1000 followers on any of my social media accounts. Some options that I considered are to expand fellowship are making YouTube travel vlogs or reproducing blog content into shorter Instagram posts. Travel vlogs might not be possible right now since I am not in Japan nor visiting Japan soon, yet an Instagram account can be started soon. I will be able to promote the blog Nihon Shoku and build my multimedia design portfolio at the same time.
Monetizing was not my initial aim to start the blog, yet, if it is possible I would definitely work hard on it. I will also need to follow internet trends more closely and learn from more influencers on social media, so I can start off on the right track.
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Process Post | Visuals
Studies have shown that visual content helps people retain information better, suggesting that visual content creation for a blog is as important as written content. Some examples to learn from are Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and all other social media platforms with a large amount of visuals. My blog has several visual contents including the logo, large photographs, some gifs, yet, there are no videos, infographics or audio. To develop such content for my blog, I brainstormed a few ideas that might fit
First, I should make more videos during my future trips to Japan, and try to incorporate some audio within. I personally would not want to include my voice, which as an alternative, I can make good use of the current trend of ASMR clips. ASMR videos on chewing and eating sounds match with the theme of my foodie blog, create variety in contents and incorporate visual contents. It can be a tasting video of food bought from a convenience store in Japan or take-out from Japanese restaurants, which will allow me to relocate myself to a quiet environment for better soundtracks.
Secondly, infographics can be used to explain my blog post’s content, such as steps of a recipe, proper table manners and more. Similar to Kane Honnosuke‘s instructions on “How to eat Tendon”, I can learn from the store and create guidelines with illustrations. Generating my own artwork also helps my blog to look more consistent in terms of graphic styles, colour choices and more.
I will definitely try to include more multimedia content into the blog, so as to help audience understand my content better and improve the blog’s quality.
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Perfumes
I just realized I’ve never talked about what perfumes I love. I have only used a few perfumes in my life so I know which brand is my favourite. I have really only used Bonpoint perfume, Elizabeth & James, Chloe and Gucci Bloom.
I have NEVER finished a perfume in my life, but when I got the ‘Chloe’ perfume it was like my life was changed forever. This was my new scent and everyone complimented me on it. It had become my favourite scent I’ve ever used. I have used the ‘Chloe’ perfume since grade 7 and haven’t wanted to change it since.
I got a new perfume for Christmas and I never thought I would ever want to use another perfume. My backup for my ‘Chloe’ perfume is my rollerball version of the ‘Chloe’ so I’ve never ventured out. The new perfume I got was the ‘Gucci Bloom’ perfume and the second I smelt it, I was in love. This perfume is now my backup to the ‘Chloe’ perfume and I will use it if my other perfume runs out.
I would definitely suggest the ‘Chloe’ perfume and ‘Gucci Bloom’ because they both smell amazing on anyone and they last for such a long time.
Hope you guys enjoyed reading and try either of these perfumes!
xx
Changing your makeup for Summer
Change your makeup like you change your style for every season. Sometimes people don’t remember to change how they do their makeup for each season. I’m not saying to change it for fall, winter, spring and summer. I’m saying that if you have a makeup routine for the winter climate, you’re going to need to change it for the summer climate. Here are some tips on how to make the change easy.
- Don’t use as much face makeup. This is important because people may load up on the foundation, concealer and powder during the winter time because they can and there is no chance it will sweat off. Now that we are moving into the warm weather, wearing that much face makeup can be dangerous because it is super easy for it to sweat off. My advice would be to either use a BB cream so it is a lighter product that you are putting on your face or to just use concealer on your face. I suggest using these products because it is less stuff on your face and if it is
super-hot don’t have a lot of product sinking into your pores., you Also I would suggeston using a serum instead of a moisturizer. I would use serum because personally, I find it less thick then moisturizer and it makes you look dewier then what you would naturally look like.- A lot of people probably think I would suggest changing your normal makeup to waterproof makeup. I WOULD NOT! I personally hate waterproof makeup and I would never suggest it just because I feel like it never comes off.
Obviously if you feel like it is necessary to wear makeup if you are going swimming or just hanging out by the beach then you do you. I would honestly just say to go out without makeup if you are confident enough. - Sunscreen before putting on makeup or make sure your face products have SPF in them.
I know I don’t have a
Thank you for reading!
xx