Gabby's Marketing Blog

Aside from sharing photos, content and business related pages, Facebook can also be used to benefit non-for-profits. Facebook Social Good fosters a community that cares by empowering people to make the world a better place through tools that have positive real-world impact. With this, Facebook users can either raise money for a cause, offer help to the crisis response center, support global health initiatives and/or build and foster relationships through mentorships. A Facebook page can give your nonprofit a voice and presence. The biggest benefit of all this is that 100% of donations made through Facebook payments to nonprofits will go directly to those organizations. While some may be skeptical of this, Facebook claims their donation payments are processed by their licensed and regulated subsidiaries. While this seems like a great idea to help communities around the world, it is important to further look into the platform to better understand where the donations are going.  ...

 This week, I assessed the search traffic on the same Google Analytics account from last week. Search traffic is categorized as either organic or direct and both are measured on the account. Direct traffic occurs when a visitor arrives directly on a website, without having clicked on a link from another site. Organic traffic, on the other hand, are those visits that are tracked by another entity, usually other search engines. Search traffic information is important to have because it informs the business about how people are accessing/viewing their content.  This is also a helpful tool for measuring return on investment. Search engine optimization can help increase search traffic by a significant amount if implemented correctly. As you can see from the image, 64.7% of search traffic was organic and and 35.3% was direct on this account. It is often common for organic search traffic to be a higher percentage than direct. All in all, this information can inform a business ...

Search engine optimization can be overwhelming for beginners when it comes to understanding basic SEO essentials. Before diving straight into a website, it is important to prepare and implement the necessary tasks to guarantee the best results.  According to the following  article , there are 9 essential tasks one should complete before moving forward with the SEO process. Completing these steps will help you launch a website that is search engine optimized with ease.  The 9 steps include: Setup Google Analytics Setup Google Webmaster Tools Check Your Indexing Status Run a Crawler on Your site Pull Keyword Volume Data Optimize the Title Page of Your Site Eliminate Duplicate Content Create remarkable Content Tell the World About it  While these steps may take some time to complete, it is beneficial to understand what must get done to make the SEO of your website the best it can be. In the end, the result will be worth all of the ha...

This week I used Google Analytics to further analyze the account activity from one week compared to a previous week. Metaphorically speaking, this task will allow me to "take the pulse" of the website to see how much traffic is occurring. I can then compare the data to get a better understanding of why traffic either increased or decreased in a given period. Businesses can use this tool to see how effective their website is in attracting new users and retaining old users based on their marketing strategies. The first date range I set was for February 10 to February 16. The data showed that there were 13 users, 11 new users, 17 page views as well as other metrics. I compared this data to the week of January 12 to January 19 and there were significant changes. This data showed that there were 64 users, 64 new users, 211 page views, and a much higher bounce rate. It was interesting to see how much the website traffic differed earlier in the year compared to now.  

Whether you're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, your social media presence ultimately helps contribute to your personal brand. It's important to remember that potential employers often review your social media to get a better understanding of who you are and what you share with the public. The content you share may be the reason for not getting or getting a certain job. With this in mind, effectively utilizing social media to build your personal brand is crucial in today's world.  LinkedIn is a powerful business networking tool that can be utilized to help develop one's personal brand. On this platform you're given a lot of flexibility to showcase who you truly are. Creating a profile that is professional and detailed will help grow your network and attract people who relate to your personal brand.

On April 21, 2015, Google released its mobile-friendly ranking factor into their algorithm. This update was designed to give a b oost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results. A mobile-friendly website is one that correctly displays on mobile and hand-held devices such as iPhones, Androids, Blackberrys etc...This responsive web design makes for a streamlined experience when viewing the website.  This feature is extremely beneficial because it was found that 30% of consumers will abandon a site if they have trouble loading or viewing it on their mobile device. With this in mind, websites should initially focus on the home page where the  majority of traffic will occur.  To check your website for mobile-friendliness, webmaster tools is a great place to start. It analyzes your website to tell u which pages are already mobile-friendly and where there are issues to improve upon.   

This week for class, I dived a little bit deeper into a Google Analytics account to analyze a variety of information. I was specifically focused on comparing the amount fo desktop users to mobile users. To do so, I first set the date range to include the last 30 days. After that, I navigated to the left side of the page where I clicked on the button Audience. A drop down button appeared and I selected Mobile Overview. As you can see in the chart above, information is separated based on desktop and mobile users. This information shows that there have been 130 desktop users and 23 mobile users in the last 30 days. Other metrics like new users, bounce rate, and session duration are also measured. All of these metrics can help companies better understand how users are viewing their content and which method may be more effective for them.

This week I did a practice SEO audit on the website LinkedIn. I visit this website frequently to post blogs for several classes as well as for seeking job opportunities so I was interested to see its performance report. An SEO audit is the process of analyzing how well your web presence relates to the best practices. I used the website gtmetrix.com to do this. After running the website URL, the scores for LinkedIn were analyzed. The results showed that this website has better than average performance scores. The page speed score was calculated to be 92 % and the average is 72%. The Yslow score was found to be 98% and the average is 71%. This website loaded 4.5 times faster than the average at only 2.6 seconds. Overall, the performance results for LinkedIn were very good and it was interesting to see how this website might compare to others.

Measuring social media ROI is key to budget for your social marketing strategy. Your social media strategy depends on your company objectives like brand awareness, customer satisfaction, revenue etc... To simplify, social media ROI is the sum of all social media actions that create value. It is in the company's best interest to know what will be the outcome of all the time, money and resources invested. Often times, companies with limited budgets will cut back on social media marketing because they don't fully understand the potential return on investment. Understanding ROI not only helps the company understand what tactics are/are not working for them but also how they can shift their tactics to be more effective. To measure social media ROI, it is important to have clear objectives, set SMART goals, track the right performance metrics and know how much you're spending on social media. Following these steps will help you break down exactly how social media is benefitin...

For class this week, I looked at the Inbound Certification Course on HubSpot. The Inbound Certification Course teaches you how to run a successful inbound business, from marketing to sales to services. The course is made up of six lessons, 15 videos, and 4 quizzes. It should take about two hours to complete the course and cover all the material. The lessons in the course covered topics like growing your business with a flywheel model, creating a company purpose, setting business goals, creating buyer personas, and developing the buyer's journey for your business. All of these topics will help you better understand the fundamentals of Inbound  and how to apply these methodologies to your business.  Overall, this was a very informative course that taught me an effective way to accelerate company growth.

Google Analytics has a neat function known as date range. Date range allows for the user to view certain metrics during a specific period of time. These metrics can help businesses understand how effective their current marketing strategy is as it shows how many people visited their page and how long they stayed on the page. You can change the date range to today, yesterday, last month, last month, last seven days or last thirty days. Another benefit of this function is that date ranges can be compared and the user can view the data side-by-side. This is a very simple way to compare data and see how the metrics changed from one period to another. Analyzing the number of page views can help a business grow as the ultimate goal is to reach the largest number of potential customers.

With over 2.1 billion active users each month, Facebook is a great platform to interact and engage with customers. Creating a Facebook page for your company can be a very effective marketing tool if utilized correctly. Besides increasing exposure to potential customers, a Facebook business page can help with market research and save on marketing costs. Being on Facebook undoubtedly makes it easier for people to discover and interact with your brand online. Recently, I created a Facebook business page for my boyfriend who is in the process of opening his own company. I shared the page with all my Facebook friends and encouraged them to share the page with their friends. After just a short time, the page received 197 follows and likes. Creating this page was a great way to introduce the company to the public so that people can be aware of the services offered before he actually goes into business in a few months. Once the page is fully completed, customers will be able to learn everyth...