Jan Walker's CSIT 155 - Spring 2021 Class Blog

  One great way to get your name known is to write a book or even articles for periodicals. A number of SEALs have written articles for Forbes, and Inc. All of the articles are linked online. If you write a book, then reviews will be listed on Amazon, B&N.com, or Goodreads. Yelp makes me really nervous. People can be passionate in their reviews. One bad review cannot be undone. Google Maps does not make sense for our business. The consulting will be brought to the customer.  BNI - BNI Wave of Success is comprised of local business professionals who meet regularly, in a positive and supportive business environment, to strengthen relationships in the local business community - and to help one-another build business through the exchange of warm referrals and personal introductions. MeetUp - Good old fashioned MeetUp groups is a great way to informally meet new people, enlarge your network and  have fun at the same time. There are mountain biking meetups,...

In today's world there are a dizzying number of online tools for businesses. Depending on your industry you can go down a number of rabbit holes. I would prefer to take advantage of modern digital tools than the way we used to do even just 20-30 years ago. In 1993 I opened my brand new acupuncture office - with no patients. How did I try to get clients back then? A tiny but very expensive single line in the Yellow Pages. It had moderate success. After that it was word of mouth, mailed coupons, and door to door hanging of flyers and distribution of brochures. If I could overcome my fear of speaking in public, I would go to a few networking groups. I hated it.  When researching online tools options, I realize I already use many of them. I am the corporate secretary for a nonprofit martial arts organization. I switched the whole corporation to Google Suite tools. They have a nonprofit version that we will move to next. We use mainly Google docs and Google drive and gmail. But G-suite ...

Business Marketing with Twitter I signed up for Twitter in 2009. It never appealed to me. I quickly got overwhelmed by the fast-paced  nature of the platform. Unless you could engage often it seemed like a waste of time. If you didn't engage often then it was a waste of time. Catch 22. After dusting off the username and password to get into my account, I did a little researching and exploring. My researching revealed pros and cons of this platform. Benefits of Twitter Frequent and carefully scripted tweets can promote brand awareness and help your business create a larger and more robust online digital presence. Frequent tweeting helps you to control the narrative about your business. If you're not actively speaking for your brand, other people can speak for you. It may not be worth the gamble to leave it to chance.  Creating a community around your brand helps to you to learn about and finely tune your target market. Having a dedicated following strengthens your brand and ...

 I commented on the following blogs: Jonathan Golding Teri Lendy Sydney Gardner

 I commented on these classmates' blogs: Caleb Sanchez Anthony McCarthy Tess Truesdale Haruka Yamaguchi

Email Marketing What does a company put in their newsletters? All kinds of things it seems. How often do entities send out emails? For some of the consultants that I get emails from it appears that once a day is the most common.      I think I receive a hundred plus emails a day. Most of those are some sort of marketing email. I seldom open them. But for this assignment I burrowed a bit on my junk mail account to see what is happening. Since starting this class and taking on the challenge of marketing my husband's consulting business, I have been lured into buying some programs that were advertised on Facebook on how to increase your followers, how to develop content, etc.  So naturally I get lots of emails to buy additional programs.    Billy Gene sends me emails at least once a day. He is a flashy, high profile marketer and has some good advise. Great headlines! The emails are mostly plain text with lots of white space between each line. It's easy to rea...

 Adding Google Analytics  

Blog Categories I have been on enough blogs to know that I truly appreciate when the posts are broken into categories. It makes information easier to find, plus it provides an overview to see if I'm interested in staying around to read more.   For my own site, I have researched blog categories and I have found out that they organize your site and allow readers to find the information they want. They serve as a type of table of contents that organize your posts by topic and sub-topic. I makes navigation easier for your visitors.  In addition, I found out that the more you blog and use categories the better your SEO becomes.   Who doesn't get writer's block now and again? When you have categories you have a sort of built in writer's prompt. It helps with planning as well. Right now Trident Pacific Consulting has a blog at https://tridentpacificconsulting.com/blogs/ Currently it only has one category. Forrest would like to have categories for: Organization Devel...

Making Your Blog Personal Who wants to read a boring blog post? Who wants to read anything boring? Unless it's something necessary, like the directions on a box of cake mix, no one. And how do you write something that's not boring? By making it place where people connect. By making it personal. By letting people get to know you or your customers. Sometimes that's easier said than done. What are some tips and tricks to luring in your reader with compelling content? By providing human interest to your content. If you’re trying to establish a personal, welcoming brand voice, you’ll need to write in a way that people can emotionally relate to; to become a member of your tribe.    Share a universal struggle or universal joy.  My business is providing quality golden retrievers to families. I write about my dogs, the pain of losing one to disease, the disgust of cleaning up a puppy who rolled in his own poop, the joy of seeing families with their new puppy.  What do these ...