Julia Price

 All things social media!! My favorite haha. I honestly have a love hate relationship with social media.. it can be so much fun but it's ridiculously easy to compare yourself to others. It really is such a powerful tool though. I surveyed my followers on Instagram and over 70% of them found their wedding photographer on Instagram which is CRAZY. But I did the same thing! I can't remember the last time I Googled a product, if I know what I'm looking for I'll just go to their Instagram page and click on their website there. I like that I don't have to wade through ads or spam links, I can just immediately find what I'm looking for. BUT. That being said. Websites are where the money gets made. (Unless you're an influencer) When Instagram/Facebook was down for a few hours a couple weeks ago, a business owner I follow stressed the importance of websites. If social media went down forever and took your website down with it, we would be in trouble! They compared so...

 Search Engine and Landing Page Optimization! My landing page is pretty good I think, it's very true to the ads that I'm running. I do think I should add more to it, give it more body text so it's not as choppy and abrupt. As far as SEO, my website needs a lot more to it to help it out. There isn't a lot of texts, pages, or products. I think something I could do to help it become more established is adding social media links, blog posts, and more on my About page, specifically about Date Night Boxes, since that's my main keyword. My website's SEO isn't very good right now because there's not very much to optimize, so I need to change that. I also want to focus on optimizing more unique or specific keywords on my pages. I'm trying to focus more on the locations, even though my product is able to be shipped. This way, I can create blog posts about Rexburg, about what it's like dating in a college town, etc!

 We're getting even more into the nitty gritty of Google Ads! As well as tracking successful conversions for your business. My conversion is when customers complete an order, so that's where I installed my code. I'll be honest, I was surprised at how many different codes I needed, for a simple small business. There's a lot to learn though, and why not take advantage of all the resources available to us? I feel like we're in the endgame now, just fine tuning our ads and SEO to hopefully see some good results. These projects and discussions have given me a lot to work with and apply to my photography business. I already have some keyword and headline ideas which is exciting! I'm also excited for my classmates, the different websites sound really interesting. I hope that people will post their websites so we can all look, like a mini science fair. 

 Google Analytics, and Quality and Relevance Scores!! Lots of big words and big moves here this week. First impressions- if you don't use Google, your business is toast. There are SO many resources in Google to build up your SEO and get your website in front of the right eyes. It's amazing how in depth they are, especially for a free service. Google will tell you if how your ad is looking, so you know if it's ready to be published. This means you truly get the most bang for your buck, which is what we're all looking for right? There's also resources within Google that will let you know how you can improve your quality score, it really is just a wealth of knowledge and resources. I love how everything works together too- Quality score is a reflection of your Ads, which can be linked to your Analytics, so you have a good idea of what's going on within your website after the Ad is presumably effective. 

 Ads! I had a bit of scare this week, where I was unable to get into my Google AdWords account. Luckily I figured it out after going incognito, so I'm taking my business underground and operating in secret. I'm just joking around, but seriously- going incognito is so much fun to say! Anyways, back to the task at hand. Expanded text ads. It was really cool to see my business ads set up in the same way that I see REAL business ads. Does that make sense? It just feels very legit and professional. And, it was super easy! I'm kicking myself for not running any ads for my photography business, but I definitely will be running them in the spring, when rings start getting bought and weddings start getting planned. It was also really cool to see what my classmates are doing for their businesses, and what their focuses are. I hope that we get to share our websites with one another, I'd love to see what everyone has been working on. I have some improvements I want to make to my we...

 GoogleAds and Keywords! The nitty gritty. I feel like this is where we're really going to learn HOW to make our business successful, with SEO and Ads. You can have the most amazing, fantastic business in the world, with the world's most beautiful website to go along with it, but if people can't FIND your website.. what's the point? This is something that I've been needing to work on with my photography business, but I've felt a little hesitant for whatever reason. So I'm glad that I'm in a class that will force me to start making ads, getting familiar with the program, and that allows me to see the results. I've been thinking a lot about WHO I want to see my website, and what those customers might be looking for. Aside from creating a product that I think will serve my target audience, I have to really get inside their heads to a new level, trying to figure out what they're literally typing into their phones. It's not as creepy as it sounds....