Handling social media within a company can be crucial in maintaining the appropriate image. When searching for social media guidelines for companies, I stumbled upon two in particular that I will compare and contrast in this post.

Intel outlines their social media guidelines using 3 “Rules of Engagement”, with these being Disclose, Protect, and Use Common Sense. I find their approach to social media to be very positive as they promote it greatly through these guidelines and encourage their employees to use it often but in the right way in order to most effectively engage with customers.

Intel Also promotes their employees to be themselves and be honest while engaging in social media. This is a respectable rule that tells me that Intel doesn’t zombify all of their employees into becoming a product of Intel.

The other social media guidelines came from a consulting and outsourcing company called Cap Gemini . Many of their guidelines are similar to Intel’s. They express the use of common senses multiple times throughout their rules of engagement and request that their employees think before they post. The only difference they have in their guidelines compared to Intel is that they express the responsibility of whoever is posting. They tell their employees that they are on their own when it comes to social media and that if they screw up something, then the blood is on their hands! (I may be getting too dramatic here, but I need to make this blog post somewhat interesting.)

All in all, it is good to have some rules for your employees to follow, because social media can become a raging monster that will eat and regurgitate your company.

Google Analytics

By looking at my Google Analytics report from my MKTG 470 project, I observed that over the course of the semester, the amount of visitors to my website had a sporadic trend, until reaching March 14th, when they shot up like trees!  This was most likely due to my PPC efforts using Google Adwords. I find it pleasing to see that 25% of the people who visited my site were returning visitors!

It was also interesting to look at where my traffic came from using the Traffic Sources page. Search Traffic made up most of my incoming web surfers at 54.08%. Most of this percentage came from people searching for the keyword “music business” that I linked to one of my Google Adwords ads. Most of my referral traffic came from my professor’s website, where she posted the websites of all of her students.

By looking under the Content tab on Google Analytics, I can observe which pages on the site were viewed the most. It was no surprise to me that my JMU page received the most visits next to my home page. This was most likely due to my search engine optimization efforts while trying to optimize the phrase “love JMU”. I am pleased to see that the Avg.Time on Page was about one minute. This tells me that whoever was on my page took the time to read my content.

MKTG 470

I learned so many useful things from my MKTG 470 Internet Marketing Course this past semester. I now know how important it is to have a presence on the internet, and how many effective tools there are that can be used to expose a website to the world. Also, MKTG 470 made me well aware of the work it takes to maintain a successful website with ever-changing content.

The Future

Looking into the future, I see internet marketing being a crucial part of my career.This summer I plan to use my social media skills learned from MKTG 470 while interning at Dark Horse Recording Studio in Nashville, TN. After graduation, I plan to obtain a marketing position at a music company, and I now have the skills it takes to go into a position and start a successful internet marketing campaign.

In order to optimize my “I Love JMU” page using the phrase “love JMU” I used several on-page and off-page factors that would increase the chances of my site being found when searched. I made sure to include the phrase “love JMU” multiple times on the page and even made the heading of “I Love JMU” big, bold and purple. I also made sure that the title of the page and the URL contained “love JMU” or a variation on it. I also took great advantage of the All in One SEO Pack . I filled every field in the SEO Pack with phrases that included “love JMU” somewhere in them, which was an effective method of off-page optimization.

By using these methods, I was able to move my website up 10 pages from where it showed up before I began my search engine optimization venture. Initially, my site appeared on the 16th page of Google when searching the phrase “love JMU”. Now when I search the phrase, I happily find my website appearing on page 6.

I am sure if I included more link building and off-site methods of optimizing my page, I could have had my website appearing on the first page. On my Crawler X Report, I was rated very low on off-page factors such as “External Links”and “Anchor Text Terms”, but I excelled in on-page factors like “Title Tag” and “Heading Summary”.

Although my Crawler X Report only gave me a score of 30/100, I feel that my optimization efforts went pretty well and I am happy with being on Page 6 of Google.

After doing some reading on Google Webmaster Tools, I’ve come to the conclusion that if anyone is interested in knowing ways to improve their website through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), then it is a must-have tool. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), allows the user to gain insight into useful information about their website.

For example, The Site Performance tool gives the user a comparison of how fast their website loads when matched up with other loading times. This allows the user to take the necessary steps to alter their website so that it performs at a more responsive rate. This tool also gives the site-master tips as to how to cut down on load time.

Another extremely useful tool that GWT provides is the “Keywords” tool. This lists the most significant terms that are scattered about on your web page. This could definitely come in handy when one is trying to drive traffic to their site. By knowing what keywords are most significant on your website, you have the ability to structure your site around those words and have web crawlers stumbling all over your site. After running this tool on my site, I found that “music” is the most relevant keyword, which is no surprise to me at all.

While GWT offers such useful tools, they must be used the right way! Bbriniotis provides “7 deadly mistakes” to avoid while using the Webmaster tools in order to prevent any negative outcomes of using it.

First off, I want to thank Deborah Van Horn for taking time out of her schedule to reach out to current internet marketing students. It was very kind her to come out and give insight to the industry to current students.

Last week, Ms.Van Horn, the current VP of support services at Rockingham Group and board member at JMU, came into my Internet Marketing class to give a presentation on who she was and her experience with internet marketing over the course of her professional career. Having 9 years of experience with a large local company and 10 years of experience with the Rockingham Group, it was interesting to hear her input on the influences of internet marketing. She described the impact of social media to the insurance industry. The main factors that she explained were social media’s effect on influencing new sales, building customer relationships, and getting feedback from customers. She said that just like any other business, being knowledgeable about the customer is crucial, and social media has helped her businesses in that aspect.

She explained the intensive internet marketing that can be done through Facebook’s business tools. There are plenty of target marketing tools on Facebook that allows companies to advertise to their targeted customers to a pinpoint degree of accuracy. She also presented her company’s Facebook Page , and pointed out parts of the page that need improvement to be effective in representing her company in a proper manner.

Throughout her presentation, Van Horn gave us some advice about our career goals and how to use the internet to be successful. She told us that we should never get too comfortable in what we are doing, because things are always changing, which is a very true statement in my eyes. She also advised us to regularly Google our name and see what comes up. Because of the growing importance of the internet, she said we should make sure that we show the world what we want a potential employer to see.

I greatly appreciated her coming into our class and sharing her insight on the subject of the class. Ms.Van Horn can be contacted through e-mail dlvanhorn@rockinghamgroup.com or twitter: http://twitter.com/debvanhorn

As an avid music listener and a starving concert buff (haven’t been to one in too long, the college budget), I thought I’d share with you all some of the most intriguing music festivals in the U.S. of Summer 2012.

Click icons to link to the full setlists.

Now, the kid who grew up playing blink-182 cover songs in me was stoked to see some of the bands playing this year’s Bamboozle in New Jersey.Some of the highlights on this list are the aging blink-182, Incubus and Foo Fighters. The rather predictable Skrillex. I personally would like to see Bayside one more time, they tend to put on a solid show.

Looking at the line-up for 2012 Sasquatch Music Festival in Gorge, WA made me wish i was living on the West Coast! Some big highlights here are The young legend Jack White, Grammy-winning Bon Iver, The Shins (with an overproduced new album), Tenacious D (of course they’re playing the Sasquatch Festival, he is Jack Black’s father), The Roots and Silversun Pickups.

My roommate Ben is going to enjoy a great time at Bonnaroo 2012 in Manchester, TN. Radiohead is the sole reason that everyone should go.

Electric Forest. I don’t know much about this one, but the name caught my eye. STS9, Bassnectar, and Major Lazer with a cast of others will make it an Electronic/Ambient heavy line-up but it should be a nice mid-summer journey.

No one buys music anymore. It is a result of the ever progressing world of technology and the expanse of human’s communication tools. Because of the internet, “illegally” downloading music has become a hobby of music listeners young and old. The Harold Sun reported that 1 in 4 of internet users download music.  If I want to listen to my favorite band’s new album that comes out next week, all I have to do is a couple Google searches and BOOM, I am rockin’ out.

While the revenues from recorded music are vanishing, I believe something much more valuable has appeared. The new technology that has created music pirates is a blessing in disguise. Now, unlike than ever before, a 14 year old boy can display himself to the world playing a mediocre cover of your favorite song on Youtube, a touring band can “tweet” to their fans while roaming the world, and new music can be spread like wildfire on social networks.

Megaupload, a popular file sharing site, has recently been tanked. But rather than frown upon illegal downloading of music, record companies should welcome it with open arms. It is free promotion that is reaching all parts of the globe and companies must find a way to take this benefit and turn it into profit. Marketing is at the forefront of the profit line in the music industry. Live performances and publishing must become the main source of revenue and this can only be achieved through successful marketing of the artists and labels.

What is your take on this situation? How does the music industry overcome or take advantage of this environment?

Welcome to my blog.  I am currently enrolled in Strategic Internet Marketing (MKTG 470) taught by Dr. Theresa B. Clarke at James Madison University.  As one of the course requirements, all students will be completing some of the assignments as blog posts.  This is my first official blog post for Dr. Clarke’s course in the JMU Department of Marketing.