So what is Social Media Marketing?

It’s the process of engaging with target audience on social media platform that include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more found on today’s internet. It somewhat does and doesn’t matter which social network someone decides to create a page, to have an effective social media marketing requires content to bring in new followers and give reasons to come back to the page/website. I saw it somewhat does matter because some social network are made for certain things like linkedin for business, twitter for updates and Instagram for pictures so the same content can’t always have same reaction unless a follower is following all your social media channels.

To give an example, a startup company/org starts there first Facebook page on Facebook. To get an audience for the new page, the example company will need to start having content in order to have followers to like the page. Example company can choose to go the random route with different content to target different types of audience or go the target audience route which could have higher chance of engagement with content that aim at a certain audience.

And now what is Viral Marketing?

It’s the process of the same publish content from the example company above from either a social media page or website. People follow pages they like and can choose to Reblog/reshare the content on some networks however many don’t need to reshare the content by pressing a button, they can also just copy the link and share it

An example site would be this site to begin! You see the floating bar with social media on the left (Desktop) or the social bar bellow (Mobile)? (If don’t see it, something aka extension is blocking it!)

That is viral marketing waiting to happen! Once someone shares let’s say the homepage of this site on Facebook, people will see and interact with the link but that interaction is just part of the viral marketing. To make the shared link of this site to make it viral, one person shares the link and then two other people share with more and more people share the site!

Overview:

Social media marketing is content that is made for target audience engagement while viral marketing is content that keeps on getting shared from one person to another with different people in different groups.

That’s it for this blog post!

Eddie

Enjoy!

Dear Alex,

I have been hearing you never heard of the term personal branding and wanted someone to teach you about it. The term personal branding is when finding something unique that you can build, create a personal reputation along the way and bring in customers from different areas. Everyone may give you different answers about personal branding and that’s ok because the majority of responses will be right about it. They themselves will probably have personal experiences that contributed to their answer. Alex, to get started on your own personal brand in a short way, you need to find three things that will help you get there. The first thing you can do is asking yourself “what do you know about yourself that can help people to get to know you best?”, meaning can you share something. The second option is to create a personal statement to have goals that include steps on how to accomplish those goals over time. The third and final step is to let the world know that your product or even services are available for by use by posting it on social media.

For me Alex, what I did to have my own personal media is by having a website that is searchable. It may not sound a lot to people but having a website allows me to tell visitors or searchers that I have something they may have. Bloggers such as myself share information that some people want which allows to me be personal since it’s my website! Try to stick to one subject at a time to gather people to your site, but if you have the time then you can add other subjects of information.

Having an active personal media is like having a speaker, which is a start for people who want followers. As you grow with more and more followers thanks to social media, you need to ask yourself an important question; “What makes me different from other bloggers?” An answer to this question is finding the niche of your target audience. So, if you were to become a food blogger, for example, you can choose to travel from state to state to let your audience know that you travel from California to New York, eat at a
certain Mexican restaurant and tried something the like house burrito special ending with you review of it. Having a food blog or any other type of personal blog may not be an easy task but having fun will make it less stressful and can make you happy to share your thoughts that can lead to new followers.

Another thing I learned within my personal branding class is having a strong and understandable message for readers to read aka typography. You may be wondering “what is Typography?”. It’s the designing technique of words, shapes, colors, and lines found on newspaper, TV and digital advertising. By having it strong and readable typography, digital advertisers can make it easier for online shoppers to find their desired product. Without it, readers will have a harder time understanding what’s the message
behind the design and no visitors will come.

If you ever wanted to become a blogger or even start a company online, personal branding is one method of starting from scratch. Sure, there are other methods of marketing that can help the business flourish but to stand out from the competition is a crucial step to gather followers and build customer loyalty over time. Without it, people might find your brand but will notice you have a similar product that all over your competition has making yourself not unique.

Thank you for listening to my opinion on personal branding Alex, it was a pleasure sharing my personal experience as a digital marketer. Don’t afraid to own a website to make your brand vision into reality!

I wish you luck

Knowing a website’s traffic is crucial to know if a business is growing because as more traffic comes in, the more the chances an e-commerce site can make a conversation on sales. However, knowing where and how the traffic comes from is something that will help markets see the effectiveness of an ad or organic post:

This is where knowing about utm comes in handing when ready reports!

Utm are particular keywords that can be automated or manually inserted into any links and be ready by powerful analytical platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook, or even Matamo (formerly Piwik).

But what are UTM?

Utm has many meanings; one common one is “Urchin Traffic Monitor,” but I like “Universal Tracking module” because it’s nice, short, and memorable!

A website’s URL with Utm code added will be like this:

myexamplesite com/?utm_source=email

The utm part is after “?”. This code can be added anywhere to track to see where traffic comes from like for example, the example shows the source of the traffic is coming from an email sent out to people.

Besides utm_source, other utms can be added as well, either replacing utm_source or adding after utm_source=email

Another example with the most extended module would be this one:

myexamplesiteofstickers com/?utm_source=button&utm_medium=english&utm_campaign=sticker&utm_id=animal&utm_term=common&utm_content=diecut

Utm_source, Utm_medium, Utm_campaign, Utm_id, Utm_term, Utm_content

Each will be explained below for more information:

Utm_source: The source in the example shows the person brought to the site by a button. Other examples could be links and third-party side like google.

Utm_medium: The medium is helpful to know by knowing which language or type of traffic is coming from. In advertising, CPC is commonly used to show visitors come from paid clicked ads.

Utm_campaign: Stickers are used to show that that person was coming from a sticker product, for example. Other models are like different social networks as well, but utm_source would be better for social networks.

Utm_id: Going off utm_campaigns, utm_id would gather more information about the campaign, such as an animal sticker was clicked on rather than a creative, unknown, or other types of sticker products, for example.

Utm_term: This section is useful primarily for keywords, so every day is used to describe the type of stickers used because the sticker could be rare, limited, or other.

Utm_content: Finally, is utm_content is commonly used for a/b testing for specific ads. Let’s say a company wants customers to go between two ads with different content. A/b testing would have utm_content:ada vs. utm_content:adb

How to add or create utms?

A straightforward way of utms for any website would be manually creating the utm or using a site. Google recommends https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/ga4/campaign-url-builder/ as a method of adding utms to a URL. The website asks first the URL a person wants to add utm, and the rest will be up to the visitor with utm_campaign, utm_medium as the other requirements for a successful utm.

The website describes each utm or parameter on how they can be helpful.

Now the moment of truth!

How to read UTM?

In order to read Utm, a person needs to have access to analytical software. As mentioned earlier, google analytics is a popular choice because it is well known. It connects to advertising software such as google ads which gives more information on ads and utm. Another choice is Matamo, which is not well known, but it is free to install, and it is more privacy-friendly, giving more information.

To read utms on google varies,

One method will be acquired on the left side, overview, all traffic, and source/medium.

Another method is going to acquisition, campaigns, and all campaigns to see custom campaign names.

There is always more to learn about utms, so keep researching to find more information!