Taylor Cwikla's Mastery Journal

This month has been an interesting capstone to the past year and ultimately the past 4+ years as I transferred directly from finishing my BA to this program. Although we did not specifically focus on new skill acquisition much this month, it has been an excellent time for reflection, and a few thing have stood out as I reflect on this journal.

Tools specific skills are ultimately useless. Initially, I was bewildered by the fact that we were not studying industry specific tools like Google Analytics, and I wouldn't understand why we were not grinding away at spreadsheets of data. A year later I now see that the value of this program is learning what questions to ask and then knowing where to look for the answers.

Small choices can have large impacts. Having maintained what I feel are relatively good grades for the past year, the assignments that I did not put the time to develop fully into caused substantial amounts of work well completing my IMP. This was wholly avoidable, and a perfect example of hindsight is 2020.

Although this program ends, the learning presses continue. This one builds on my first observation. Now that all this knowledge has to be turned into practice the learning must continue to master current tools of the trade and practices. Like has been said many times by now, much of what we learned a year ago is now obsolete, the goal moving forward is to take this experience and use the skills developed here to solve future problems.

This past month I have been taking Internet and Law. This course has provided a great opportunity to develop a better understanding of how the current laws fail to sufficently address the issues the modern internet purposes.

During this course, I have moved and started a new job making it difficult to wrap my head fully around some of this courses content.

Interestingly one of my first projects at this new job is a website redesign. During this process, we will need to rewrite and edit our Terms of Use. I enjoyed the projects focused on assessing Terms of Use and Privacy agreements. Before this class, I had never read a terms of use agreement and had no idea what I was really signing every time I checked on of those boxes. It is interesting to consider what rights and provisions I have signed away of the years.

I understand that in order to use online services you must abide by that services rules, the same way you must follow the rules at a physical establishment; this class has raised the question of what cost we are willing to pay for these services. Would I be willing to post pictures on a website that can then retain them and use them as they wish? Probably not, but realistically I already have (even Priceline retains the right to use any images and content you use in connection with them).

Am I going to read every Terms of Use agreement from here on out? No,  however, I will have a better understanding of the power these agreements posses; and from time to time I would be worth it to see what updates and changes are being made to agreements I have already signed. Important ones to watch would be social media providers, as an emerging technology their terms must grow quickly and the effects of those changes could have real long-term cost.

Cheers,

The class I have been waiting for, since starting this program analytics has been a bit of a metaphorical thing. Whenever talking about measurements, it was always in a hypothetical sense; I had no real experience working inside of an analytics software or reporting with one.  

Despite failing and receiving my Google Analytics certification, I still greatly appreciate the opportunity to use the tool and will be working to retake the test next week. The repetitive nature of Google Analytics makes for a substantially hard learning curve then I was expecting.

Before this class, I did not see the value in paid analytics solutions; however after using Google Analytics, I can see the value in purchasing a simplified solution for people lacking the technical knowledge or time to make Google Analytics work for their business objectives.

Over the past month, I have been enrolled in Strategic Internet Public Relations. This course has been fantastic and came at a perfect time in my career path.

I work as a Marketing Manager and in March, my department absorbed Client Relations under our umbrella. Since adding this team, we have faced whole new challenges, and this class has addressed some of them.

One area I have been working on is creating internal PR, and I greatly appreciated the discussion on creating employ focused PR. One area we struggle with as a company is releasing new products, and get employees behind this products. I have often found that well the teams in the stores can see the positives of our new offerings, the focus becomes all the negatives. As a result, my team has begun to look for ways to create stronger employee buy-in. One option we are considering is bringing employees into the product development prosses.

We are looking to revitalise our food menu offered in our cafes this summer, and I'm looking for ways to engage the baristas in this prosses. Last time we changed the menu the baristas were our strongest critic and had little good to say about the changes which were then passed on to out customers. Well looking for a potential fit we ae considering including store teams in the menu design process, this could foster both employe engagement and brand ownership. I'm still leery of this idea solely because if we vary from there ideas, the backlash could be greater than before and in the corporate environment, some of their ideas may not be practical.

I will have to write a quick update in a few week to let everyone know how we address this issue.

All this to say I have enjoyed this course and the group project has been very fun #teamguac.

Over the past month, I have been taking Advanced Search Engine Optimization, this class has been focused on keyword development and PPC implementation.

In many ways, this class has been the class I have been waiting for the past few months. Since starting this program I never really knew where to turn for resources to test websites with, having the opportunity to use applications like SMRush and Spyfu has really opened my eye to what effect we as markets can have on out SEM.

My favorite subject this month has been local optimization. I work for the company I used for my project as a marketing manager, and local search has been a struggle for me. My predecessor attempted to update the company information and has created a bit of a mess. After reviewing the information provided by Moz Local, I know have some direction as to how to resolve some of our local search issues.

Throughout this month, our team has begun to talk about reimplementing a PPC campaign. Our hope is to start out first campaign mid-May, and we will be using to promote our summer product releases. Before this class, I was unsure how to go about bidding on keywords and monitoring a campaigns progress, this class has offered clarity on the process of managing a campaign.

My only reservation about this class has been that a month is hardly enough time to dive into these subjects, and I wish there was a prerequisite to this class allowing us to dive deeper into the tactics and strategies covered. Overall this has been a fantastic class and I'm very excited to apply the skills learned to my work.

For this month, I have been in Advanced Internet Marketing Strategies. This class has been one of my favourites to date, I really enjoyed practicing developing a campaign and learning new terminology and resources.

It's been very interesting seeing the progression from week to week, and apply new knowledge each week. During week 4 I was looking back at earlier assignments to find information and was shocked by just how much content we had covered.

The best part about this class has been seeing how all these different aspects of marketing begin to work together. This is one of the first class I have felt started to apply the information and strategies we have been learning in practical ways.

My favourite assignment was strategic planning work sheet. Although we did not dive too deeply into assembling the worksheet, it was very eye opening how these theoretical numbers we throw around turn into dollars. As a numbers guy many assignments before this class have felt kind of empty and lacking real-world application, however, every assignment in this class has clear real-world applicability.

Before this class, I was really starting to doubt my decision to get my masters degree and my choice of Full Sail, the classes just weren't delivering the content I was hoping for. However this class has really lifted my spirits about continuing, I can clearly see how this class benefits my future and the skills it has been developing. After this class I can see where things are headed for the next few months and I'm excited.

Cheers,

This past month has not exactly been what I was expecting at the beginning of this program. I originally believed that this class would be about the use of new media, and the specifics of how to use these tools. Instead this class has largely been about strategy and how it relates to our companies’ larger business goals.  

Although this class have been challenging and interesting, it is my belief that we have yet to be tough the underlying skills necessary to retrieve the data necessary for some of this classes assignments. For instance, much of this classes reading involved apply and interpreting metrics and analytics, however we have yet to learn how to retrieve professional quality metrics. I am aware that this might be my own incompetence or that I might have missed something along the way.

Despite this frustration New Media Marketing has been an education experience and very enjoyable. Ultimately I did receive a hard copy on Mack Collier’s book Think Like a Rock Star, and have been reading it during the evenings. I have really enjoyed his larger then life approach to creating fans for your brand.

Through out this class I have even to began to talk with the company I currently work for about the possibility of launching a brand ambassador program and what that might look like for us. Although this class was not at all what I was expecting, I have learned a lot about turning customers into fans and the value that can add to your marketing plans and your larger business goals.

 Thanks for reading my post!

Cheers,

Over the past month in Internet Consumer Behavior and Analysis we have been studying several hot topic issues in online marketing. Coming into this class I was under the impression that we would be study how to determine customer behavior and what to do with that data; however, this class has spent more time discussing the ethics and the why of how we market to customers.

Personally my favorite part has been the last week when we have been discussing retargeting, this is an issue we are all becoming very aware of and is hotly debated. My personal feeling that this form of marketing could be beneficial for both markets and consumers when applied ethically has remained unchanged. With that being said I have begun to seriously doubt the industries ability to conduct this form of marketing ethically, and with out tight regulations on what can be done with this data I believe we could be heading down a slippery path.

We have also looked and consumer generated content, this approach to expanding your brand voice is exciting and very interesting to me. I love the idea of creating a community around your brand and engaging that community, the benefits are undeniable and I’m excited to see how companies will be able to develop this emerging tactic.

Over all this class has not been what I was expecting. However, this has been a fantastic experience. As marketers I strongly believe that ethics need to be of critical importance, hope we can have more discussion about these topics in the months to come.

 Cheers,

This past month I have been taking Digital Story Telling and Branding MAR632-0. This course has been informative and challenging. Well study graphic design I took a similar class here at Full Sail, and the course material was similar. However, this graduate class was much more in depth. Having the ability to focus on my specific company (Trek) and study their brand has been an exciting and interesting experience.

My favorite exorcises was the brand archetype discussion. This introspective look at Trek’s personality was both enlightening and interesting.

This month’s class was Internet Marketing Fundamentals. This course covered the basics of what internet marketing is, and provided a few discussions about best practices. Over the past month I was introduced to analytics, and the key role they play in tracking marketing campaigns and websites. Analytics is an area I’m very interested in and currently know little about, I have never used them before and am looking forward to future class about there use.

 Professionally I would like to work for a company working in house doing campaigns and public relations, and see the internet as the main vehicle for this interaction with customers. I see analytics as one of the key tools for monitoring and cultivating this interaction.

 With my background being in graphic design focusing on old media such as print, I’m excited to begin my transformation into new media. Currently I have the knowledge to build websites that look the part, but lack the necessary SEO and tracking to be effective tools. Internet Marketing Fundamentals has developed a base of knowledge to get me started in the proses taking these sites to the next level and make them powerful marketing machines.

 I originally set out with the goal to learn strategies for web based marketing, and how others have used them successfully. Over the past month I have just scratched the surface of these tools, initially I did not understand just how in depth the proses was and came in with my expectation a little high. Despite not accomplishing all I had originally thought I would, I can now see the great proses at work that will continue in the months to follow.

Cheers,

Inspiration Post 08/30/15

For starters Michael Stevens more predominantly know as Vsause is not only a YouTube celebrity, he is also an innovative thinker his TED talk on “why we ask questions?” (Stevens 2013) is a great example of how he challenges the way we think.

After watching this talk I have begun to ponder the role questions can play in learning. Outside of the obvious, what role can they play in my learning? I have often been the student that keeps his head down and finishes the work, but thinking about questioning why I’m learning this information has shifted my mind set. What more could I gain from this program if I raised a hand and simply asked a question?