GCS Final Recommendations

Ten weeks ago I enrolled in a web marketing course.  As part of the course, we had to complete a service based learning project with a local charity.  I chose to assist the Gwinnett Children's Shelter with increasing their online web presence.   Gwinnett Children's Shelter is a residential facility that assists families of neglected children. They also offer counseling and tutoring.  

The goals of the Gwinnett Children Shelter is to raise their visibility in the community.  They need more donations, and volunteers.  They would also like to increase the number of attendees at their events. Currently the GCS website gets about 1100 unique visitors per month.  They have a Facebook page that has 18 likes.  We would like to see the unique website visitors increase to 3000 in the next 3 months.  We are also looking to gain $10,000 in donations to help with the upcoming activities for the summer. 

During the course we have looked various method of web marketing and I am ready to make my final recommendations.  I think that GCS needs to implement a combination of social media, email news letters and search engine optimization.  

Currently the Gwinnett Children's Shelter uses their website to communicate their availability to potential residents. Implementing social media usage is the first step. Using social media in conjunction with the website would assist them in reaching a broader audience.

Facebook

The organization currently has a Facebook page but it isn't updated regularly.  The page currently has 18 likes.  I recommend completing the Facebook page to include as much information about the Gwinnett Children's Shelter as possible.  This page should include links to the website and all other social media pages.    Updates should be made a minimum of 3 times per week. I recommend Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the updates.  This way readers know when to look and if the staff gets in the habit of updating on those days.  The page should also include contact information and the availability of beds. 

LinkedIn

A LinkedIn page needs to be created for the Gwinnett Children Shelter.  LinkedIn is a social media platform that focuses mostly on the business aspect.  GCS has over 100 business and community partners all of these companies need to be added as connections.  LinkedIn will be used to keep in contact with those companies. Individuals can also add GCS on LinkedIn to stay informed about our current events.  This page should be updated at least once a week.

YouTube

There are currently a couple YouTube videos that mention the GCS but there is no YouTube page for the organization.  This needs to be created.  I recommend that a YouTube page is created for the GCS.  The page should contain 3 videos to start:

• A video about Gwinnett Children's shelter as an organization including history and services offered.
• A video about the staff.
• A success story told from the family's perspective.

Twitter

A Twitter page also needs to be created for the organization.  This page will provide an information feed for the GCS.  They can also add the availability for beds here.  This page needs to be updated at least 3 times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  This will give GCS a way to interact with the community in real-time.

Each link should be listed on the website and at the bottom of every monthly newsletter. I recommend that they request that all of their partners promote their new social media pages on their social media pages to help gain followers on the different platforms.

The second recommend is setting up an email newsletter.   This should be done after all of the social media pages have been implemented. The newsletter will serve a dual purpose.  First, it will aid in informing people about the new social media pages for the Gwinnett Children's Shelter.  Second it will reach those individuals that the social media platforms don't reach.  

The tool I recommend is Target Hero.  Target Hero is a free email marketing tool.  Target Hero is a very easy to use email marketing tool that has built in templates that the organization can use for their email campaigns.  Target Hero can also send out birthday greetings for the individuals on the email list.  It also has built in reporting so that GCS  can track their campaigns. 

I recommend that there is a link added to the website for visitors to sign up for the monthly newsletter. 

Here is a quick video to further explain the tool. 

GCS has already optimized their website by placing keywords in their metatags.  My final recommendation is that they register their website with Bing, Yahoo! and Google.  This can be done by using the corresponding add url link for each site.  

The would also need to create a site map and register each page with the search engines.   

I know that funds are limited with the organization so  the things that I recommended would only cost man hours.  I have also offered to assist in the implementation.  There are also no special technical requirement.  The user just needs basic computer knowledge and a computer with Internet access.   .  

Klout is recommended to track all of the social media tools.  All of the web traffic can be tracked with Google Analytics.  It's a free tool that is also easy to use.  There are also plenty of reference materials on the web for the organization to use a a resource.

Affiliate Marketing

How can I make money from my blog?

That is the question that most bloggers ask themselves when they start their blog. Contrary to what most people believe blogging is very time consuming so bloggers want a return on their investment.

Here we will discuss a way you can turn your blog into a money maker.

Affiliate Marketing:
You can become a marketing Affiliate.  Marketing Affiliate programs such as  Amazon Associates  pay users for any traffic that is sent to their site.  The user must make a purchase and have it shipped before you are paid.  See Amazon's fee schedule for more detail on referral fees.  The user isn't paid until the amount reaches $100.  They have the option of recieving a check for a $15 fee, deposit for a $10 fee or an Amazon gift certificate.  Of course all the products promoted on your site would be be related to your target audience.

Blog Analytics

As we discussed in a previous post, when creating your blog you want to make sure that you keep track of your reader and website hits on your blog.  The analyzing the traffic is sometimes referred to as analytics.

The tool you decide to use to track your blog analytics should track the location on your readers, the time the spend on your site as well as how they enter the site.  This information is very important if you are trying to figure out what is drawing people to your site.  Once you find out what people like the simplest way to keep them is to give them more of what they like.  For instance if your blog is about widgets and you see that most of your traffic is coming in from a post about Widget 123 it may be best for you to do additional posts about this particular model.  You could also put a link to this post on the blog's home page.  Let's review a couple of tools.

Stats:
This tool is built directly into the Blogger platform.  You can use it by selecting stats from the menu options in Blogger.  The tool includes easy to read map that shows the location of the user.  Stats gives real time statistics that display page views.

Mint:
The cost of Mint is $30 per website.  The installation is very simple and it returns the normal statistics:  Search, page views, and visit details.

Inbound Writer:
Inbound Writer is a free tool that provides extensive details.  It also gives you the general analytic results.

Overall you need to try a few different tools to see which ones you like best.  They all return similar information so it is basically a matter of preference. Here is a list of 20 tools to get you started.

IT 337 Explained

 

In December of 2012 I enrolled in IT-337 Internet Business Fundamentals. This  a 10 week long that focuses on web marketing.   I took this course because I wanted to learn about marketing on the web especially through social media.  I thought this information would be useful to me when it came to market myself through job searches.  I also thought the information could come in handy at work. 

The course has far exceeded my expectations.  Here is a list of the things we covered.

• Holistic Marketing and Analytics
• Gathering Data and Analytics. 
• Creating effective marketing plans. 
• Here we had to create our own marketing plans.  I found this both challenging and educational. 
• Search Engine Marketing.
• Pay-Per- Click 
• SEO Optimization
• Local Search Engines
• Yahoo
• Yelp
• Ask
•  Online Advertising and Tracking Performance.
• Email Marketing
• (This week) Blog Marketing
• Blog Marketing is usually done by blogs just like the one you are reading now.  Blog is short for "web log" and is a type of journal that is written on the web.  They are updated periodically but to get more visitors the blog needs to be updated often.   According to Miller: "You should consider a company blog a marketing tool, a way to talk directly
  to your customer base on a regular basis. It’s a mix of public relations and
  promotion, a source of constant information about your company and your
  products."

The main focus of all of these topics is getting the user to take action and buy your product or visit your site.  Also like all marketing you have to track what is working and for that you do analytics.   We will discuss that further in the next post.

Reference
The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide, by Michael Miller. Published by Que Publishing. Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.