Tag Archives: website

Process Post #11: Two A.M. Thoughts takes on social media?

Transmedia storytelling is a “process” as Henry Jenkins (as cited in Kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com, 2013) would call it. It’s a process in which elements of content—in his example, a fiction—are spread across a variety of channels and platforms. The goal? To create a “coordinated” experience for the audience.

This process works beyond storytelling as well. For instance, it could be integrated into our online publications and more. You may have seen examples of this integration online before and may not know it.

Transmedia integration IRL

Say you come across a YouTube video. You might then find a clip of it on TikTok as a way to promote the full-length video. It may be a montage of certain snippets of the full video or a short clip. You might also see that same TikTok on Instagram in the form of a Reel. That TikTok content could also be posted on Facebook as a video post. Same content, different platform, and they all bring you to the main video on YouTube.

Now, that may not have been the best illustration of transmedia integration, but that is the essence of it. It’s one piece of content that is deconstructed and reconstructed as needed to suit the preferences of other platforms so that it can be shared across a variety of channels. Together, they function to create that ‘coordinated’ viewing experience that I mentioned earlier.

Imagining integration across channels

If I were to integrate Two A.M. Thoughts across multiple media, where would I begin?

Something to keep in mind before I dig into that is that Two A.M. Thoughts is a blog with a lot of text-heavy content. This isn’t a YouTube channel with video content, so integrating my content onto a platform like TikTok might not be ideal. It’s definitely doable, but there are other ways we can approach this too.

I could, for instance, use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to showcase quotes or snippets of my posts. These would act as a teaser or preview for the full-length post which would be linked in the Instagram bio or Facebook profile.

Between Instagram and Facebook, I prefer using Instagram, and I think that my audience would too. I could probably also use a platform like Twitter to promote by posts with quotes and snippets, but Twitter is not much my forte or niche.

With more time, trends, and research, I can find alternative ways of integrating my content across different media, but these ideas are a good start.

References

Kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com. (2013, November 21). Pokemon as Transmedia storytellinghttps://kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/pokemon-as-transmedia-storytelling/

Process Post #10: SEO 101: The basics

SEO is one of those fancy-sounding acronyms I keep hearing about, but I don’t know much about what it is. Yes, I know it stans for search engine optimization… but what does that mean? Well, I’m going to find out.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means of understanding and reaching your audience. Not only is it a practical tool that can improve a website’s searchability and visibility, but it’s a cost-effective one too (Hollingsworth, 2021).

Hollingsworth (2021) goes on to outline 15 different reasons we need SEO, including that organic searches are the main source of website traffic and that SEO builds trust and credibility.

While this is all great and insightful information, what does it mean for me and Two A.M. Thoughts? How can I boost my website’s SEO?

Three ways to boost SEO

Natural links. One way to boost my SEO is to include natural links throughout my content. These aren’t links that are paid for, monetized, or tracked in anyway. Rather, they are links that are there to reference other content, websites, or sources. Links are something I include in my posts regularly, but a majority of them are external links that take readers to outside sources and websites. One thing I’d definitely like to work on is linking and referencing more of my own blog posts in my content—internal links.

Analytics data. Website analytics are another way to boost SEO. Particularly, they help us track users’ behaviours so that we can adapt our site and content to suit their needs. Analytics are something I have set up, but I could sure spend more time looking into them to help cater Two A.M. Thoughts a little more.

Positive user experience.  A positive user experience can change everything for your site. Being able to offer users with the information they’re looking for in as few clicks as possible can make your site stand out from others alike, notes Hollingsworth (2021).

Takeaways of search engine optimization

SEO is an essential for all websites. There are so many more ways to boost it than the ones I’ve listed above, but those are just a start. Some things to keep in mind are that SEO is the key to long-term success. It’s a cost-effective and quantifiable gateway to new opportunities, so it doesn’t hurt to start adapting your SEO today.

References

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

Assignment Peer Review #3: perfecthurricane.com

For this peer review, I explored Riella’s webpage “Perfect Hurricane” (PERFECT HURRICANE – a personal blog about stuff and things). From a user’s perspective, I see how she organized the site’s categories from the top menu bar, and how I’m introduced to loud bright colours. This factor helps users easily navigate their way around the page. I also like the animation effects incorporated into the page as they caught my attention instantly and gives the impression of an interactive site. I find sites with visual effects entertaining and make me want to explore more and play around with them. In terms of a reader’s perspective, visually the text is legible and the website contains visual graphics and pictures to help communicate an idea of what “Perfect Hurricane” is all about.

Scrolling further, I found the carousel concept of gallery photos fitting to her site. It shows a quick intro glimpse of events and a story. After viewing the gallery, I wanted to know more in-depth about the site. So the next page I visited was the “Bio” section. It displayed an easy quick read about the author, although I do recommend maybe giving a small background behind the website name “Perfect Hurricane.” On this page, I like how she kept a consistent theme with bright colours and animations. I also found it helpful that a contact domain was added to encourage involvement and community with social media.

In terms of social media, this week’s readings focused on AI and marketing tools. For a successful site, it depends on how the author decides to display their platform and reach their target audience. In this week’s readings, we learned that Data.ai. Is a useful marketing tool that helps analyze and report the marketing performances of various apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc. It also discussed how this generation is known as Gen Z, and it is heavily influenced by technology and social networks (Data.ai., 2022). It is a factor to learn and apply to our sites to move towards success in marketability. As mentioned in Data.ai, topics and trends relevant to Gen Z drive engagement through connections and social platforms (Data.ai., 2022). Taking this into account, I see how “Perfect Hurricane” is more of a personal brand, and to engage both personal life and engagement to gain an audience, adding factors of trending memes or songs can add to viewer activity. For example, at the bottom of the home page, I see how there’s a song displayed. I suggest adding a small description or hashtags to reach other users who listen to the same song or artist. This is a way to grow the community through the author’s interests. Also using these social media tactics like hashtags, links, and trending titles will easily capture Gen Z’s attention but also make use of marketing tools and strategies.

This week we also touched on SEO. According to Hollingsworth, SEO is the most viable and cost-effective to understand and reach an audience. It also introduces the main search engine competitors like Google, Yahoo, and Bing (Hollingsworth, S. 2021). Keeping this in mind, adding relevant features to the site like trends, topics, and facts can increase the audience by keeping these search suggestions in mind. Usually, search suggestions are common topics or prompts that users look up, therefore incorporating topics to reach an audience based on the themes/topics of your site would be a useful tip to consider to grow engagement and further reach an audience to grow a solid community.

Lastly, visually I see that there isn’t much content going on. I suggest uploading more content relevant to your theme that can also be relatable to an audience you’re trying to reach. This will grow activity onto the page, and leave the impression of being “incomplete.”

Earlier like I said, the way how this site is well laid out with colours and grid components. It looks fun and interesting and the animation makes users feel engaged. These are good site attributes to continue and improve on.

– Eliza (aka Peanut)

References:

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

Panipekeesick, R. (n.d.). Perfect hurricane. PERFECT HURRICANE. Retrieved March 27,
2023, from http://perfecthurricane.com/

Posiel.com. Data.ai. (2022). Retrieved March 27, 2023, from
https://posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dataai__state_of_mobile_2022__en.pdf

Search Engine Optimization

In this week’s lecture, we’ve learned about search engine optimization and how it can help bring audiences to your website. Although talking about this concept this week, utilizing SEO to attract an audience had been always around to configure on Word Press. Moreover, utilizing the tags option to allow my website to show up at the top of Google searches is now one of my key goals in order to expand my website to a larger audience.

Before this week’s lecture, I didn’t realize the importance of using tags. I only added a few tags just for completion as I thought it was a requirement for the class. However, this is not true and can help my website to further grow.

As Genshin Impact is a popular game, I do not see that any of my posts show up in the search results. For example, if I try to search for a build for the character “Raiden Shogun” you will see multiple websites that are not mine but all with similar content. In fact, it does not show up even if I type “raiden shogun abysmal guide”. When searching for my website it only shows up at the bottom on the second search page. Discouraging, but this means that my website has a lot of room for improvement to reach out to a bigger audience.

An interesting result I got from one of my searches was when I searched for “absymal guides raiden” on Google. Instead of seeing my website show up in the search result, I found that the Posiel site was in the result.

search result on google of "absymal guides raiden"

This search result makes me wonder why my website does not show up first before Posiel. However, I will work towards changing this result so that I can have my website show up before Posiel.

With all things considered, having my website show up as one of the top search results on Google is something I’d want to achieve. However, considering the popularity of the game, I do understand that there will be a challenge. Nonetheless, it will not prevent me from working towards this goal.