Cara Schneider

This semester in MKTG 470, I dove right into the world of internet marketing, and learned a lot about what it has to offer. While only a few months, this class actually taught me me way more than I expected. Here’s the play by play:

Sophisticara.com‘s Web Traffic:

My website has been up for a few months now, and during those few months 61% has been new traffic and 39% has been repeating traffic, which is exciting! People are also spending around 4 minutes on my site, and I have about a 3% bounce rate. Most people coming to my site are coming from Google search results. I obtained all of this through Google Analytics. A fabulous tool. Below is what I saw when logging on:

MKTG 470 Takeaways:

For me, it is really hard for me to name just a few key takeaways from this class, as I went in with really no experience at all in this field. With that said, I guess combining them all is a proper take away. I never knew internet marketing was so broad and effective. I can really see how people have careers in this field, it is changing by the hour and really is an effective marketing tool.

Finally, Regarding My Future in Internet Marketing:

To put it lightly, there isn’t one. I have learned a lot in this class, but I can honestly say there is really is no room for me in the internet marketing world. I can easily see the benefits, but this is not my outlet. After class, I will be taking down this website, along with my Twitter. I think it is too much for me to keep up with, and I don’t enjoy sharing all of my feeling with the world and whoever else happens to stumble upon my blog. If I was taking this course over, I don’t think I would have really done anything any differently. I am glad that the class forced me to dive head first into all of these topics, because I can promise I never would have on my own. So thanks for everything Professor Clarke, but this me officially signing out.

One of the assignments my MKTG470 class had to do was optimize the phrase “love JMU” for our each individual sites. This means that when you google “love JMU,” we are trying to be as close to the top of the first page as possible. I added “love JMU” things to the page to try and help optimize it- such as title and content.

Right when we started our blogs, we googled “love JMU” so we could see where we would fall. My results were not with in the first ten pages of search results. What I didn’t do was find where exactly it was, I regret doing so.

We also had to to grade our website. This website give you an idea of things you are doing right and wrong to enhance your website traffic and the success of your site.

My results:

As for googling “love JMU”  this time, I was on the ninth page! So I don’t know exactly how much I moved up in my rankings, but I’m excited that I did!

As for the website grader, the results were not as great. below is a screen shot of my results

Everything went down from my original score! In a panic I started looking through it and found all of the reasons why, and they did make sense. I don’t tweet often (which is totally true), I haven’t posted any of my blogs on facebook, etc.

So to improve my rankings, there are definitely some things I can change. For one- utilizing social media outlets to push my blog. That seemed to be the biggest recommendation from this site. They also recommended that I blog more often and get more links to my site. All of that is great advice for my blog!

For out next MKTG 470 assignment, we had to play with Google Webmaster Tools, and report back with our findings. As far as I understand, Google Webmaster Tools offers free feedback on how a website (that’s yours) is performing in the Google search engine.

Why should marketers use Google Webmaster Tools?

Google Webmaster offers free feedback on how your site is doing, but there are more than monetary benefits to it. It offers you insight into your website such as what search queries are bringing your site up, who has links to your site, and how well a bot can crawl through your website. Incredibly useful tools if you want to optimize your page.

As for my personal site I was curious to play around and see what all I could find, and had a few surprises, the biggest of which were the search queries. I was so surprised to see that my the words that were making my site come up mostly had to do with high heels. I couldn’t believe that my background picture was the most popular thing bringing my site to the top of the search queries. Not any other picture, or any words that I mention. Interesting.

Even though I could obviously see most of the benefits of Google Webmaster Tools, some things were way over my head or tools I couldn’t use. For example, there was a whole section on “Google +” and since I don’t have an account, most of the feedback looked something like this:

Even though I might not get it all, this really is a great tool, so you should all get started! Here is the link for help center if you run into any problems. Happy Optimizing!

Last Thursday my MKTG 470 class welcomed Lindsay Crone, a guest speaker who shared her knowledge and insight regarding life after college, and her personal career.

Mrs. Crone graduated James Madison University in 2008, and is currently employed at The Search Agency as a Creative Director. I really loved what she had to say. I liked that she was young yet still had experience and good advice to share, and had a lovely demeanor.

While they might not be the most obvious, there were 3 main things that I took away from her talking with us.

1. Focus. Mrs. Crone really expressed the importance of narrowing our skills and focusing on what we want to do. She shared a story with us about how she received some advice on this subject. He said to her that walking into an interview saying that you’re willing to do anything and everything actually is NOT working in your favor. I really saw the value in this as I tend to do the exact same thing. I will admit I have a Superwoman complex.

2.  Don’t be afraid to create your own position. Find a company you like, and sell yourself. don’t wait for the perfect position to open up.

3.  Go with the flow. I was really inspired by Mrs. Crones story on how she came to her current company. Her original goals were set in non-profit organizations, but this internet marketing gig fell into her lap and she absolutely loves it. I have a tendency to resist that sort of thing, so it was nice to see an example where it had worked out so successfully for someone.

On behalf of my class and JMU, I would really like to thank her for taking the time out of her schedule to speak with my class. We really loved having you here, and hearing what you had to say. Thank you!!

For my classes next blog post we had a choice between two different topics- retargeting ads and social media policies. I instantly chose retargeting ads, because I had a run in with them.

My professor gave us an article from the New York Times to read discussing what it actually is, and some ethical implications it has stirred up.

The best way to define what retargeted advertisements are is with an example. I recently started kickboxing, and since I was so proud of myself for actually working out, I decided to purchase a new bag to carry all of my things in.  I did a couple different search queries on different bags and eventually stumbles across a bright blue Nike bag.It cost a little more than I wanted to spend, so I decided to wait to purchase it. During the next two weeks, I saw advertisements for this Nike bag on many websites I visited, from Facebook to Google. Also, not only was it the same style I was debating buying, but the same COLOR. In a way, it really freaked me out.  This, my friends, is re-targeted advertisements. Here’s a more technical definition.  Below is a visual representation.

Retargeting does make me feel uneasy.  I don’t like that something I can Google can come back to haunt me. While it might not be actually too intrusive, and doesn’t cross any real lines, my personal feelings toward it aren’t good.  I just think it’s creepy. As for the future of retargeting, I do think that it is a promising strategy, because the facts show that people do click on what is relevant to them. But I still don’t like it.

Welcome to my blog.  I am currently enrolled in Strategic Internet Marketing (MKTG 470) taught by Dr. Theresa B. Clarke at James Madison University.  As one of the course requirements, all students will be completing some of the assignments as blog posts.  This is my first official blog post for Dr. Clarke’s course in the JMU Department of Marketing.