#SMPASOCIAL

We talked in class about web analytics. While we won’t formally be including them in our social media strategy plan, I’d like you to take a look at your own.

It might be a nice point in the semester to ask yourself: why am I doing/writing about what it is I am writing about? do I care about this subject? Other than class, is this doing something for me? -- and feel free to share your thoughts, knowing you audience is listening.

Please look at your platform and if possible, get a Google Analytics code (Simply just sign up for Google analytics)... or look at the internal analytics.

Perhaps reflect a bit on what you see based on what we talked about in class--from when people tend to engage your post to where people are coming from to what their demographics are to when maybe you should post, etc (not limited to this, just some suggestions).

Briefly come up with a three step plan of attack to boost engagement on your site, too. 

Be sure to prepare an infographic

I recommend using piktochart or https://www.easel.ly/ or http://www.chartblocks.com/en/

I recommend taking into account the following (adapted from here) 

You’ll want to keep these in mind particularly as I grade the next set of blogs.

1. All good infographics start with a “why” or tell a story. Good infographics tell a story quickly, fairly, and accurately... 

2. Focused data:

Use relevant data

Use reputable sources

Credit your sources

Clear design: Use simple graphics that that tie to your data

Use data visualizations that most clearly illustrates the data 

Make sure the graphics and numbers match

It’s been a minute since your last blog post. So, let’s go big!

1) Please create a gif -- an original gif -- from a photo or video that you yourself have taken-- that relates to your blog. 

Some hints: 

https://imgflip.com/images-to-gif

http://makeagif.com/

Note: making them from your mobile phone can put you into “app-land” which often mean that you can’t get an embed code for dropping into your post and only result in gifs that you can share on social platforms.

2) Please try to reach an influencer (or two) with your blog post -- so that means that you’re thinking about who an ideal target audience might be and who the “big name” might be. How might you do this without being overly promotional, too? You might try Twitter first to reach out to influencers. Please chronicle your efforts in an addendum to your post and let us know what happens (good opportunity to practice screenshotting something if you get someone local-famous to share your content). THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE BEFORE YOU HAND IN YOUR POST FOR THE WEEK (eg. before Sunday 7 PM)

3) Some of you have already begun working on an infographic. If you’ve got one, go forth and prosper and feel free to post/share. Otherwise, wait till next week.

1) Make sure that you try to post a video at a length or starting point we’ll actually watch... so!

Please embed a youtube video, but CUT the video to the appropriate starting point you’d like to emphasize. See this trick. 

2) Either or (or both!)

-Embed a Google Map (or Google Streetview or Google Earth), bonus points if it can be personalized or rendered interactive (Google Fusion is the easiest way to do this but lots of prebuilt tools, including ones your classmates blogs)

This would be a good thing for posts about weekend trips, where restaurants are, etc.

-Embed a Soundcloud or Spotify clip/song/podcast into your post. If you want to customize it you can (some hints from wordpress that can be adapted to Wix or other code: https://en.support.wordpress.com/soundcloud-audio-player/)

If you want to get fancy, you can even embed a soundcloud file or spotify clip into your blog as streaming audio/autoplay (good for someone with a spooky blog or a music blog) here: https://soundcloud.com/pages/embed

To use Google forms, you MUST be signed into email.gwu.edu

Please hand in blog comments here:

https://docs.google.com/a/email.gwu.edu/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSccBoCXxOwzWdpedtmhdtq04kr85blPm1FPAhTS5TkpwDebHg/viewform?c=0&w=1

Please hand in Tweets here:

1) Be sure to have responded adequately to comments that I have provided–> improvement is a key metric for assessing performance

2) Please be sure that you have some place where classmates’ blogs (or related blogs, that’s OK to) can be found – a blog roll on a rail, or a page off the homepage.

3) This week is a visuals week– we’re going to work on sizing photos appropriately, wrapping text (when appropriate), and yes, putting in a slideshow!

See below for details

Incorporating/Sizing photos--> basics of image design:

This can be a challenge. Here are a few things to ask yourself when sizing photos --> This is an incredibly helpful post about how to think about how to choose photos, when to wrap text, what to look for in designing with images

https://designschool.canva.com/blog/how-to-marry-text-and-images/

The tips from below are helpful too.

“https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/blog-image-best-practices/” (check out tip 1 & 2, btw)

To do some of this, some of you will want to check out some free tools, like www.picmonkey.com (basic) or  www.canva.com (advanced) or maybe you already have some basic photoshop skills. I’m no artist w/images but this is pretty fun. You may find you can do a lot of this on Snapchat, too. FYI the above links require FB signin.

NEXT BIG CHALLENGE: SLIDESHOWS

These are not hard! 

All you need is the right software -- or the right plug-in

A good plug-in on wordpress is https://wordpress.org/plugins/slideshow-jquery-image-gallery/

How do you put in a plug-in in wordpress: https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/wordpress_plugins.htm (Warning: you may actually have to pay something!) Be sure to caption your slideshow to tell us what's in each photo

WIX? http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/07/new-wix-slideshows-feature/

Procedure: Virtual exam during class time (12:45-2). Via google form, so please be sure to fix any login issues (remember go through email.gwu.edu)

First question: Think of/create/imagine a social media platform for exchanging politics. What would it look like? How would it work? What would you call it? Don’t go crazy here: I wouldn’t imagine having to write more than 150 words to describe it.

From this question, you’ll be asked about 5-7 questions based on reading we have done. I’ll ask you to respond to key themes and consider ways that your app/platform would account for them. (For example: Would you use an algorithm? Why or why not? In your answer, please be careful to define what an algorithm is) …

Most questions will not require more than 100-150 words of short answer. However, exams that reference direct concepts/reflect clear evidence of engaging with the reading (VS just general class discussion) will get the highest grades (as in truth, it’s easy to BS the example question I just gave you….) – please be sure your answers don’t just reflect generalized knowledge but specific points/ideas garnered from reading/discussion of reading.

All of you are on the way, with blogs blogs galore on so many different topics. Can’t wait to get started.

I really like the tips here (aside from the marketing stuff) about first blog posts.

This week, we’re going to focus on a few things that I’d like to see you accomplish. You’re all starting at different levels of proficiency, but this is what I’d like to see from all of you-- just as your general goals for where you are. (we have the meme assignment too). 

1) Remove in all obvious places the “template” text that comes with the blog format you’re using (eg: my first blog post goes here) -- so that means either writing your own text in these spots or just deleting the text that’s present. For some tips, check out: 

This should give you some idea

 For wordpress, but same idea applies): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA0AoaRZzvU

For wix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHmo9ZxFAU0 (again same idea)

more complicated: https://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_Files

2) Enable comments

Most of your comments will already be auto-enabled, but just in case, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYUHZn2f2o0 (Wordpress); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdUIcY_zwDw (wix): Tumblr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6o7bPteunY

3) An about page (not your first post)

What’s your blog about? Who are you? Post a (professional) photo if you’d like, a link to your linkedin profile, or something else. Make sure to include some links too.

If your about page is your first blog post, change and repost onto a seperate about page. 

4) Use links, add photos. Always a preference for original photos. Link to the rest of the web and to add authority to your perspective. 

5) If you’ve done all of this already because you’re starting at pro-level, think about what you should be embedding vs. screenshotting. 

Let’s start there for what to focus on this week. For full credit, you’ll have successfully done all of these things. 

MEME ASSIGNMENT 

As part of this week’s blog post, you’re going to need to create your own original meme (yes, upload your own photo or screenshot and your own text) and then embed it into your website. Think about how you might make this shareable.

To make a meme, there are about a million sites, so https://imgur.com/memegen I dunno, that’s one. 

Depending on your blog site and it’s CMS (or the code underlying how it actually looks) you’ll either be able to just pop a link that the site generates and “boom” it will appear (for example, Medium does this for you) -- or you’ll need to grab the embed code (which will look something like this (see embed post) -- then switch to the HTML editor version of your blog post & drop in the code between the text/pictures/ etc. where you’d like to put it. SIMPLE!

Here’s the Medium post, but here’s also a little hint of what I said:

When I first got to GW, I was a stickler. There were reading quizzes if it looked like students were not doing the reading. It was painful for all of us- it was fear-based learning — students doing the work because they felt if they didn’t do the work, they’d get a bad grade. This lead to a lot of memorization and a lot of reading for the sake of grade reading, which is not the kind of reading that leads to any kind of retention. I’d do things like take away or ask students not to use laptops, and if I saw students using phones, I’d literally take them away.

So I loosened up. Basically, I’ve tried to tell myself that I cannot be in control about whether students decide not to read. Or come. I’ve forced myself to care a little bit less. But I certainly tell them that class costs on average between $2.50 a minute to $5.60 a minute.

There are a few questions you might want to ask yourself after posting your first blog. The most important one is roughly this:When people google my name, am I going to be OK with them finding this blog? This should be the single most important question you ask yourself every single time that you post anything online. 

But ask yourself these questions too:

Can you mess around with the CMS? Can you open the HTML and at least look at it, maybe pop in some code if you wanted to modify it (even just code you’ve googled to find on a help site?)

Do you know how to post pictures? Do you know how to post them where you want?

Do you know how to embed video? GIFs? Music?

Do you know the difference between the home page of a Website, and about page, and a blog?

Do you know how to insert a hyperlink?

Do you know how to do pull quotes?

Do you know what a blogroll is?

Some may say that I failed with this assignment. I thought I was creating appealing and interesting content. As I mentioned in my post last week, I have had zero views. That means I don’t really have much in terms of analytics to delve into. But I think the two most important issues with why my tumblr blog did not go viral (or create an audience) is because of two issues: I did not promote the site enough and I don’t think tumblr was the right platform for my subject.

I only shared my blog link on Twitter once, and never on Facebook. While you may think this class is about experimenting with social media, though, to me it was also really about experimenting with Tumblr as a platform. While I know I have 500 followers on Twitter and by using trending hashtags I may help my content get views, I thought it would be most interesting to see if my content could stand alone on Tumblr without me promoting it. It was a pretty extreme experiment, but I learned that the Internet really is a black hole for content. Just hash-tagging your content on a platform like Tumblr won’t create a following base. Content really does get lost. I honestly think this is more valuable knowledge for me to have learned through experience than I could have read in a textbook, and it will help remind me when I make content in the future that I really do have to do my part after a post is published. Creating content doesn’t stop there: it has to be met with strong social media promotion.

I also think it’s important to point out that my blog was about real estate, and Tumblr probably wasn’t the best avenue to be sharing that content on. While Tumblr is growing in terms of more mainstream news and blog content, it’s still very much used by younger people. Teenagers don’t care about me finding cheap rent when I graduate. The types of blogs that I anecdotally see do well on Tumblr are the fashion/style/design blogs and music and pop culture blogs.

Being forced to confront the harsh reality that my Tumblr blog that I slaved over didn’t see any clicks all semester is important, albeit hard. I know now that with every piece of content I create – even when they are published on revered outlets with massive followings – I need to promote my stories myself. I see this a lot when I post stories on Forbes.com and can see my analytics in real time. While the stories always do well, especially when they are about timely topics, they do exponentially better when the Forbes Twitter account tweets out links. I want to be able to promote my content well enough that it sees those kinds of results when I tweet them out and Facebook post them. While I can’t compete with an account with 6 million followers, I now know that I need to promote posts on social media to have my content rise to the top.

Like many of my classmates, I felt uncomfortable with self promotion on social media. I think this was amplified, because I was often writing about myself and my own experiences on my blog. Why would anyone care about that?

Often times, I even hoped that no one would click on the link and read my post!

Simply put, I'd promote more. Especially on Facebook. I did better anytime I tagged a person or company that my post talked about, and when I included "news you can use." So, if I were to do this all over, I'd just have to stop being shy. 

While at first I was hesitant to share my blog on social media, I found that my traffic significantly increased each time I did. I really like my blog, so I decided to get over the embarrassment of self-promotion and start sharing my blog on Facebook and Twitter each week. Over time I found that people didn't mind these posts, and actually engaged with them each time I put out a status or a tweet. I realized social media is really key to getting your blog out there, and my friends are far more engaged than I gave them credit for. 

Every week when I posted my blog, I tweeted about it. There was a significant difference in viewers on the days I tweeted. However, I wish I promoted it more randomly in the week because then I could see if people were viewing it because I tweeted, or because they know I write them on Sundays. I do not really use Twitter for any purpose other than this class, so even through Twitter promotions, I did not gain that many more viewers. Overall, I think if I had more Twitter followers I may have been more successful.